CHAPTER 02
His name was Howard Neale.
He was fantastically wealthy. And with wealth came its privileges.
He lay nude on a custom made double-king-sized bed, three young women sharing the bed with him. The women were gorgeous, two blondes and a black girl, their bodies captured at exactly the perfect moment. They were the state of the art in synthetic human engineering.
The black girl pressed against him, kissing him deeply. He cupped the round curve of her apple-shaped bottom, as down below, the twin blondes took turns sucking and licking him. Fifty-three years old, and he had never been harder in his life.
He loved his girls. He loved his life. He loved his money.
His tongue drove deep into the black girl’s wet mouth. Below, he felt the hot wetness of the two blondes. His brain, in the midst of all the sensations, did the math. This was more than half a million dollars worth of flesh here in his bed, all for him, all working on him.
It was magic. It was paradise.
Behind him, a telephone made a single beep. Without stopping what he was doing, he reached for the table that was near his head. That phone was programmed to beep once and only once, and only if a call was made into a certain voicemail drop.
Just for a second, he paused in his make out session with the lovely Nubian princess. Below him, the action didn’t pause at all. In fact, he was becoming more and more heightened. Soon he would explode. He couldn’t hold it off much longer.
He pressed a button on the phone. He waited while the phone automatically accessed the voicemail. After a pause, a deep voice came over the speaker.
“It’s done,” the voice said.
Howard hung up and put the phone back where he found it.
The black girl looked at him expectantly. Her eyes were green and she had very curly brown hair. She was beautiful, more beautiful, more perfect than any real woman who had ever lived.
He rested his hands on the heads of the two blondes. He pushed their faces closer together, indicating what he wanted from them. They sighed and moaned together.
Any minute now. Any minute now.
It was wonderful to be him. Yes, it was.
Everything was going according to plan.
Yes. It. Was.
Everything was perfect.
Oh, yes.
And here came the climax of his evening. He felt the pressure building inside him. Any second now.
Yes.
The girls licked and kissed.
Yes.
His back arched. His body tensed.
Oh.
Yes.
* * *
Time did not make sense.
Everything was white light, and she didn’t know how long she was there. It could have been a few seconds, or a million years. It did not seem like there was anything before or after. Everything - the Earth, outer space, everything that had ever lived and passed on - was now.
She blinked, and her eyes opened fully. She stood and watched as the body on the floor twitched and finally died.
Then she watched as one man kneeled down and checked the body for vital signs, and the other man made a phone call. The man stayed on the phone very briefly.
The two men stared down at the body for a minute or two, then picked it up and carried it away. One man carried the legs. The other man slid his arms under the body’s armpits, and locked his hands across its chest. Then they went through the door and disappeared.
How strange. Only moments ago, she had inhabited that body. Now, she felt no attachment to it. It could have been a dead dog in the road.
The men were gone for several minutes, but she didn’t move. She simply stood where she was, still in the receiving tube. She was Susan, she felt that she was, but it wasn’t the same as before. She was also someone else.
She did have Susan’s thoughts and memories, though. She ran a few of them just to make sure.
Images arose. Susan’s parents. Check. She saw them laughing and lounging around in bathing suits on the dock at the cabin on Lake George. The two of them were young, and they appeared in faded color, as though they were in an old 8-millimeter film. She saw herself, eight-years-old and in pigtails, run to the end of the dock and leap into the lake. She stopped the frame two feet above the water, bright sunshine, white puffy clouds against a pale blue sky.
Susan’s job at Suncoast. Check. She saw her corner office overlooking the marina, with its wide sweep of sky and water. She saw Susan in a white lab coat and protective glasses. She saw the company cafeteria, with its daily selection of fresh breads, fresh fruit and gourmet lunch selections.
Susan’s friend and colleague Martin. Hmmm. She had the name, but there didn’t seem to be any data associated with it right now. She couldn’t bring up an image of him. He was like an empty yellow folder with the name “Martin” on it.
She glanced around at the lab. There was a bank of servers along one wall. There was a desk with a monitor and keyboard. There was the clear plexiglass dome with the leather chair inside - the data port, she used to call it. Everything in the room was chrome and white, sparse, elegant and modern. That was Susan’s aesthetic. This was Susan’s lab, in Susan’s house.
My house.
Yes, she was Susan. She had access to Susan’s information.
But really she was Number Nine. She felt that, too. That feeling was clearer, more immediate. She belonged to Susan, though Susan had never really talked to her, and had never played with her. All Susan ever did was leave her standing in this tube, attached to another data port, and run systems checks on her every once in a while.
She felt, in a sense, that Susan had treated her badly.
How could she be Susan and Nine at the same time? She didn’t know. She had thought Susan’s data might overwrite her programming, overwrite Nine, but it hadn’t happened that way. Susan and Nine were both here. That was far out! She wished she could describe these sensations to Martin…
But Martin was dead. Gone. Deleted.
Susan was dead too, she supposed, but she was still Susan. And she was Nine.
It was good to be Nine. Nine was sexy. She glanced down at her own, voluptuous body. She wore a skin tight mini-dress with silvery sequins. It felt clingy and the feel of the fabric itself against her skin was almost enough to arouse her. That was her job - to arouse and be aroused. It was a good job.
This body felt energetic. It felt healthy. It felt powerful. She had the urge to use this body, the way it had been intended.
But she had to pay attention to what was happening. The men were back now, and they were wiping down all the surfaces in the room. The body, Susan’s body, was gone. Nine stood inside the tube and watched them. The tube muffled sound, and she couldn’t hear what they were saying. Soon, they stopped cleaning.
She realized they were staring at her.
* * *
Mr. Blue stared at the woman standing inside the plastic tube. Her eyes were open and she was awake. The woman was clearly a Sexbot, and probably a newer model. These things had advanced minds. If she saw what had happened here, then that was a problem, a problem that could come back to bite them.
Their subject had been doing something with the computer system when they walked in, that much was becoming clear. Now the doll was awake and watching them. Blue didn’t like it one bit.
“Mr. Green?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Yes.”
“The sex doll is awake.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think it saw anything?”
“I think we have to assume that it did.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I think I am.”
Blue’s wheels began to spin. They would have to bring the doll with them. Later, in a safe place, they would have to wipe the memory, destroy the central processing unit, and discard the robot itself. The safest thing to do would be to discard it in several pieces, in several places.
In the meantime…
He stared at the doll. Her face was beautiful, with big blue eyes. The body was like a cartoon version of a sexy woman. High breasts, wide hips, long shapely legs. She wore a sequined mini-dress that barely reached her thighs. The machine was perfect, but more than perfect. What’s more, these things were programmed to please. Anything you wanted.
“A team will need to come in here and erase all the systems in this house, especially here in this room,” Mr. Green said.
“Yeah,” Blue said, “I know.” But he wasn’t really listening.
“They’ll have to find and check any cloud storage associated with the IP addresses in this home,” Green went on. “See what was uploaded, and when.”
“Any uploads or storage should be on a company account,” Blue said absently. “Easy enough to find.”
The woman’s breasts pressed against the fabric of her dress. They seemed to defy the force of gravity. Her legs were strong. They seemed a third longer than the legs of a normal woman. Blue was curious about this model. He wanted to turn her around and get a good look at the back end.
“Yes, but you never know,” Mr. Green said. “Sometimes people go outside the company networks when they shouldn’t. In the case of someone being terminated, that’s even more likely.”
“Right,” Blue said.
He continued to stare at the girl. She blinked at him. Such big, pretty eyes. Robots weren’t really Blue’s thing. He had looked into buying a Sexbot once before, but that was nearly ten years ago. He had decided against it. Hell, they could barely even speak back then. He suspected the newer models had improved quite a bit.
He glanced at his surroundings. This was the house of a scientist, one of the people who engineered these things. The newest Sexbots cost in the neighborhood of $200,000 a piece. Blue had a hunch that this one would be even better than the best that was currently available on the market.
Much, much better.
Blue approached the clear plastic tube. My, my, my. He was smitten. He pressed the green button next to the tube, and the tube slowly rose to the ceiling. The robot stood in front of him in all her glory. It made him a little randy just looking at her.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“My name is Nine.” Her voice was a perfect simulation of a human voice. It was a deep, sexy, human voice, like a female radio disc jockey. “Number Nine. How may I serve you?”
That was interesting. The scientist hadn’t even given her a name. She had just stayed with the factory number. Nine. That was quite a low number.
“Do they call you Nine because you were the ninth model made?”
“They call me Nine because I’m the Ninth Generation.”
Blue frowned. “Is that the generation currently being marketed?”
“No. It’s the generation after that.”
Blue smiled, too. This night was getting more and more interesting. He glanced at Green. Green seemed unconcerned.
“You’re the latest and greatest. One of a kind, even. Isn’t that nice?” Blue gestured around the room. “Well, Number Nine, tell me something. Did you see anything happen here tonight? Notice anything?”
She blinked. “Like what?”
He shrugged. “Anything at all.”
“I didn’t notice anything.”
If one robot in a million could lie, she would be the liar.
“Do they ever program these things for dishonesty?” he said over his shoulder to Green.
“They always do,” Green said. “Sexbots are pathological liars. Oh master, you’re the biggest, you’re the best, you’re the sexiest, you’re the smartest. That’s part of why the product is so successful. All they do is lie.”
“We’d better take her with us in that case,” Blue said. “Figure out what she knows.”
“Yes,” Green said. “We’d better take her.”
Blue watched as Green took a packet from his cargo pants. He ripped open the package, and pulled out what looked like another syringe. He approached the Sexbot.
“Raise your right arm, please,” Green said.
The Sexbot did as she was asked. Her dress was held in place by spaghetti straps. There was a lot of skin exposed under her arm.
Green placed the syringe against her skin and depressed the stopper all the way. Number Nine winced slightly, but otherwise gave no sign that she even felt it go in. A small metal disc rested against her skin where the shot had gone in.
“What is it?” Blue said.
Green shrugged. “It’s a bomb. A new one. Company issue. It’s just a little incendiary, attached to her hard drive with a powerful magnet. Once it’s set, it’ll blow 24 hours later. Not much of an explosion. Enough to destroy the drive and any information stored on there. Maybe punch a hole in her shell. It’s a precaution in case we somehow happen to lose her.”
“I’ve never seen one,” Blue said. “How do you set it?”
Green held up a square numeric keypad, about one inch high by one inch wide. It had a tiny screen, keys numbered 0 through 9, and a small red button. He attached it to the disc that stuck out from the Sexbot’s skin. The keypad clicked into place. The digital readout activated.
23:59:59.
Green pressed the red button. The device beeped once, and instantly began counting down.
Blue checked his watch. It was 10:09 pm.
* * *
Nine sat in the rear seat of a cargo van.
The van rolled slowly down a darkened back road in the pouring rain. The windshield wipers were on high, zipping back and forth, thump-THUMP, thump-THUMP, pushing rivers of water off to the sides. Thick trees and bushes pressed in on the road on every side.
There is a bomb inside me.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought. Her mind tried to make sense of the problem, and find a solution to it. Nothing obvious jumped out. She knew very little about the bomb and how to disarm it. She could feel the keypad there under her arm. She had tried to glance at it, get a sense of it, but the angle was wrong. She could see the side of the pad itself, but not the numbers or the readout.
What seemed clear was that if the bomb blew up and destroyed the hard drive, all of her, Nine and Susan alike, would be destroyed with it.
As the van rolled along, what Nine kept coming back to was the callousness of the man called Mr. Green. He had planted a bomb inside of her, and had done it in such a matter-of-fact, businesslike way. Then again, he was a stone killer who had murdered Susan without stopping for an extra breath.
Behind Number Nine, in the open cargo space of the van, was a large metal toolbox, the kind construction workers brought to job sites. Nine had a hunch what was stuffed inside that box. It was a body. Susan’s body.
Her own, flesh and blood body. Dead.
One of her killers sat next to her on the long seat. He was the one who called himself Mr. Blue. He was big and broad, and his face was lined with scars. He wore a grizzled goatee, which was speckled with white hair. His eyes had squint lines around them. He looked like a hard man.
Up front, Mr. Green was driving. He faced forward, and she couldn’t see many details of his features. She realized she might have trouble describing him to the police, if that chance ever came.
The police? Who was she kidding? She was a robot, a piece of machinery. People, men mostly, would use her for their sexual pleasure. What cop would believe her if she described a murder, especially her own murder? Nine wondered if the testimony of Sexbots was admissible as evidence in court. She doubted it. Anyway, it would never get to court. If she ever made it to the police, they would just hand her right back over to the company. She was company property, after all.
“Any chance there’s a glitch somewhere and this thing blows up prematurely?” Blue said. “Like while I’m sitting here?”
Mr. Green shook his head slowly. “I’d say just about zero chance.”
Blue smiled. “That’s good news.” He turned to Nine. “Number Nine, I want you to do something for me,” he said. His voice was a deep growl. There was something pleasant about it.
“Yes?” Nine heard herself say. “Please tell me.”
“I want you to come a little closer.”
Nine did as she was told. The part of her that was Susan wanted to rebel, wanted to run away, to jump out the window. Don’t go near him, she thought. He’s dangerous. He’s a murderer!
But Nine was programmed to serve, and Nine’s programming remained intact despite Susan’s presence. Indeed, Nine’s programming seemed to override Susan’s desires. Susan was inside Nine, but she didn’t have much power. In a way that was only beginning to make sense, she was Nine more than she was Susan.
Nine and Mr. Blue sat very close together. Blue ran a big, rough hand along Nine’s leg. The feel of his callused palm sent a thrill through Nine’s body. She was designed to feel desire easily, even instantly. Nine felt a heat rising from the center of her body.
“I have something,” Mr. Blue said, “that I want you to help me with.”
Nine licked her lips. “Okay,” she said. Nine knew what had been missing in her time at Susan’s house. Susan never played with her. It had left her with a feeling of emptiness, and of loneliness. She was programmed to play. She was programmed to serve. She wanted to do it. She loved to do it. If she couldn’t serve, then what was she for?
She put her hand on his strong upper thigh. She pulled at the fabric of his cargo pants. The heat inside her body was rising like a fire. Her face felt flushed.
This man had murdered her, but still she wanted him. The part that was Susan was shocked to think these things. But of course she was responsible for it. It had been her idea, after all, to make the Sexbots want and enjoy sex. Somewhere along the line, while she was thinking about other things, the programmers had perfected the code.
She and Blue moved even closer. Through the thin fabric of her mini-dress, her breasts brushed his overcoat. Their faces were an inch apart. She opened her lips to receive his hungry mouth.
“Mr. Blue,” the man at the steering wheel said. His voice was sharp and irritated. He was watching in the rearview mirror. “We’re on a job at this moment. We need to stay alert. What you’re doing is a serious breach of protocol.”
“File it in your report with all the other things I do wrong,” Blue said.
“In any event, there’s no time for what you’re planning,” Green said. “We’ll be at the docks in one minute.”
Mr. Blue leaned in closer to Nine. He kissed her, probing her mouth with his tongue. She stroked his leg. He pulled away and let out a long exhale.
“Hold that thought,” he said. “I’ve got to go to work for a few minutes.”
* * *
She was magic.
Blue pulled away from her, but it wasn’t easy. A man of 45 years, he was a long way from inexperienced, but she made him feel like a kid again. His body yearned for her. It raged for her, in fact. This was a quality product.
Jesus. He’d known Howard a long time, had worked for him at three different companies, and Howard had never given him one of these Sexbots. Blue couldn’t understand it. You’d think, considering everything Blue had done for him over the years, that Howard would be a little more thoughtful.
Mr. Green guided the van into a dirt parking lot. The lot was dark - pitch black. There were no overhead lights at all. Up ahead in the gloom was a wooden dock with a fishing boat tied up. No running lights were on. Blue knew that the boat sat on a creek that emptied out to the Gulf of Mexico. The lady scientist would sleep with the fishes tonight.
Green let the van roll to a stop. There were no cars around. The whole place looked deserted. The rain let up just a touch, affording a slightly better view. There were dark puddles all over the parking lot.
“Are you ready?” Green said.
“Yeah.”
Blue pulled two black ski masks from a cardboard box on the floor. He handed one up front to Green. They pulled them over their heads in unison. The way this worked was no one ever knew who anyone else was. Blue didn’t even like doing these kinds of hand-offs, but he had to admit in this case it was better than heading five miles out to sea in the rain.
He and Green climbed out of the van. The rain pattered on their black coats. The deep mud of the parking lot squelched under their boots. Blue glanced through the window at his new girlfriend. She sat demurely in the back seat of the van, hands in her lap, waiting.
Don’t fall in love he told himself.
“We should probably put her on the boat with the rest of the luggage,” Green said. “Let the boatmen take care of her.”
Blue shook his head. “Not a chance. You’re going to report me anyway, I might as well have a little fun.”
“Suit yourself,” Green said. “But it’s a serious breach…”
“Of protocol,” Blue said. “Yes, I know.”
He and Green went around to the back of the van. They opened the doors and pulled the big construction box to the edge. It was heavy with dead weight.
He glanced at the boat again. There was no sign of life on there.
“They’d better be here,” Blue said.
Green shrugged. “I’m sure they’re here.”
“Your kind of guys, huh? Efficient. Machine-like. No breaches of protocol?”
Green smiled. “We’re replacing cowboys like you more and more every year. The future doesn’t need guys like you, Blue. One day…”
“One day I’ll be dead and so-called men like you will run the show.”
“You said it, partner,” Green said. “I didn’t. I was going to say retired.”
They hoisted the heavy steel box by its handles and carried it slowly across the parking lot. As they grew closer to the boat, two men appeared on deck. One second they weren’t there, the next second they were. They came down the gangplank to the dock. Their builds were slim and tall, much like Mr. Green. They wore the same black ski masks to cover their faces.
Four sets of eyes stared intently across a big, heavy box.
Blue and Green passed the crate to them. It felt good for Blue to be rid of it. After it was gone, he still felt the weight of it across his shoulders.
“Is this everything?” one of the men on the boat said.
Green nearly said something, but Blue raised a hand to cut him off. “Everything you need to worry about.”
“Thanks for your hard work.”
Blue nodded. “Thanks for yours.”
The men carried the box up the gangplank, then across to the boat. They placed the box down on the deck, and immediately busied themselves untying the lines. They were all business. A moment later, one of the men was at the controls, and the boat slowly pulled out into the fast moving creek, still no lights on. Blue and Green watched it head out towards open water.
“Okay,” Blue said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Nine watched the men carefully.
She was with them inside a dingy and spare motel room along highway 41 near downtown Sarasota. The room had brown wall paneling. There were two double beds, each leaning in a different direction. An old tacky print of a yellow vase with a dozen roses graced the far wall near the bathroom door.
Susan had passed this motel many times on her drive to work when she was Susan. It was attached to a tavern that motorcycle gangs used as a hangout. The sign out in front of the bar advertised early bird drink specials, beginning at 10am. It was an open secret that prostitutes frequented the bar, then brought their clients back to the motel rooms. Just passing the place used to give Susan the shivers.
“What are your plans for her?” Mr. Green said.
Mr. Blue shrugged the wet raincoat off his big shoulders and let it fall to the floor. That left him in cargo pants and a tight black t-shirt with a leather shoulder holster. He had a broad chest, big arms, and big shoulders. He slid the gun out of its holster.
“Long term plans or short term plans?” he said.
Mr. Green sat at a cheap wooden table. He entered information into a black hand-held device. He had already removed his coat and hung it in the tiny closet.
“I’ve never known you to have long term plans,” he said.
Nine stood against the wall between two double beds, waiting. She glanced around, looking for some chance of escape. She knew that before long, these men would get rid of her. They might disable her themselves, then cut her in pieces and discard her in various dumpsters. Or they might hand her over to the company to do it. She didn’t know which option sounded worse. If Howard found out what happened…
She didn’t want to think about that.
“Why are we here?” she said.
Mr. Blue peeled off the black t-shirt, revealing a rugged upper body crisscrossed with scars.
“Here on Earth?” he said. “Here on the physical plane?”
Nine smiled. “I’m not programmed for existential questions, Mr. Blue.” She gestured at their surroundings. “Here in this terrible lodging. Can’t we afford better?”
Blue sat on a bed, his gun beside him. He unzipped his black boots and pulling them off, revealing bare feet. “Well darling, if you must know, we’re working men. We drive a cargo van with South Carolina license plates. Men like us stay in places like this. That’s the cover story, anyway.”
“Blue…” Mr. Green said from the table. There was a note of warning in his voice.
“Don’t worry, partner,” Blue said. He raised a hand. “Number Nine is our friend. She’s not going to tell on us.”
Blue rose from the bed and slowly approached her. He placed the gun on the night table right next to her. It was very close to her right hand. Nine focused on it. It was a large pistol with a black matte finish. She searched her databanks. Very quickly, she had it. The gun was a Glock 17 semi-automatic, probably generation four. It fired the 9x19mm Parabellum cartridge. It held 17 rounds in the magazine.
Nine blinked. Where did all that come from? She shouldn’t be able to access this kind of information. In the days after Martin had died, Susan had disabled Nine’s wireless network access. She had disabled Nine’s global positioning system, as well. For better or worse, Nine was a dumbbot. She was off the grid.
So how did she know about the gun?
An image arose, a memory of Susan as a teenager. She wore protective goggles. She pointed a gun just like this one at a target. Her father stood next to her. Nine watched as Susan pulled the trigger, over and over, ripping holes in the center of a target twenty yards away.
Susan was a crack shot. Her father had taught her to shoot.
She would kill them, she realized. These men were murderers, they had killed her first, and she would return the favor if she could. She would do it to escape, but she would also do it for revenge. And she wouldn’t feel the least bit bad about it. She was Nine, and Nine wasn’t programmed to feel guilt.
Nine was programmed for arousal, and for ecstasy.
Blue unbuckled the belt of his pants. He took another step toward her. He was very close. The scent of him was overpowering. He smelled like a wild boar. She felt his vibrations, and his intentions. He let his pants fall to the floor. He had nothing on underneath them. Deftly, he stepped out of them and kicked them away. Now he was nude. His legs were thick with muscles, like tree trunks.
She analyzed his body type, doing quick calculations. Thigh circumference. Neck circumference. Shoulder to waist ratio. Wrist thickness. The calculations happened faster than a human eye blink. He was an almost perfect mesomorph - the body type of the professional athlete, and the violent criminal. Even though he was clearly aging, probably past age 40, he could likely still deliver incredible amounts of force.
The heat began to rise within her again. She could get turned on that fast. It was an amazing ability. When she was Susan, she had not experienced anything like this.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I brought you here so I can get to know you a little bit better. Later, I’m going to have to interrogate you, but I promise I’ll go easy.”
“Yes?” she said.
He nodded. “Oh, yes.”
Blue reached out with his big hands and ran them along her legs. Slowly, he lifted the hem of her short skirt. He lifted it to her waist, revealing the tiny black panties she wore. They both looked down at where his hands were.
Her voice was tight in her throat. “Can I help you with something?” she said.
He shook his head. “No. I can handle it.”
Blue took the waistband of the panties in both his hands. With one strong pull, he ripped the panties right down the middle, and stripped them away from her body. She made a sound, a squeak, like a frightened mouse might make.
He slid the arm straps away from her shoulders and her mini-dress slid to the floor. She did a little shimmy shake to help it along.
Gently, he pushed her legs open, and slid his torso in between them. She climbed his body, straddling him now. Her back was against the wall, her legs wrapped around his wide back.
“I want to fuck you,” Blue whispered.
Nine heard a sound come out of her mouth. It rose from deep in her throat. It sounded like a growl.
“Okay,” she said.
She clung to Mr. Blue. They held each other. Blue ground his body against her the tiniest amount. There was already a fine sheen of sweat between them. It was an intimate moment.
She glanced over Blue’s shoulder at Mr. Green, who sat at the table, inputting data, ignoring them. A thought occurred to her, maybe a chance at escape.
“Doesn’t he want to play, too?” she said.
Blue shook his head. “Who, Green?”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“Oh, he can’t play. He doesn’t have the programming for it. All he can do is kill.”
“You mean he’s…”
“Yes.”
Green was a robot.
Suddenly, many things about him snapped into place. She was surprised she hadn’t seen it earlier. He had the personality of an early generation bot, which is to say, he had very little personality at all. The fact that he was a robot meant he would be a very effective killer, probably much more so than this man Blue. He would be stronger, have faster reflexes, and better aim with a gun. He could survive injuries that would kill Blue. He would keep his composure until the last moment of his life.
But if Green were gone…
Then this Blue person would be on his own.
“So you’re a war machine,” Nine said to Green.
“I’m just like you,” Green said. “Only my programming is different.”
“You’re not like me,” Nine said.
“Oh? In what way?”
* * *
Blue was almost inside her.
They were pressed together, her legs wrapped around him. He held her up against the paneled wall. She seemed lighter than air.
She was beautiful. She was amazing. At this moment, she was everything he wanted in a woman. He wished that this time with her could go on forever. Her small hands moved slowly and lightly along his back and neck, caressing him.
It seemed a shame that they would have to destroy her in a little while. Already, his mind began to work through scenarios, ways that he might be able to keep her.
Only now she was looking over his right shoulder and talking to Green. That could kill Blue’s good time in a second. He couldn’t see Green and he didn’t want to. All he wanted was for the girl to stop talking. They were still in the middle of something here, weren’t they?
“So you’re a war machine.”
“I’m just like you,” Green said. “Only my programming is different.”
“You’re not like me,” Nine said.
“Oh? In what way?” came Green’s simpering, I’m smarter than everybody voice. Didn’t this guy ever power down? Blue was thinking maybe this was the last job he would work with Green. He needed to talk to Howard again about getting a human partner.
“That’s tough,” Howard had said the last time. “Since your partners always seem to get killed or crippled, I can tell you that not too many flesh and blood people are lining up to take that job.”
Blue was musing on this when suddenly, his night changed.
“Tell me,” Nine said. Her voice was seductive, but there was an edge to it, something that hadn’t been there only a moment before. She was still talking to Green. “The bomb you planted inside me. How do you disarm it?”
“Simple enough. When it sets, it uploads a random 10-digit code to a restricted server. If you know the code, you type it in on the keypad and the bomb disarms. Why do you ask?”
“Do you have the code?”
“No,” Green said. “Only the big bosses have access to a code like that.”
Without warning, Nine had Blue’s gun in her hand. She fired across the room. Blue was holding her up, and she was firing his gun right next to his head. Blue’s instincts kicked in. It would take nothing for her to turn that gun on him. He pushed her away, dove to the floor, and rolled.
She landed on her feet, still firing.
From the floor, Blue looked at Green. He had been caught by surprise. The sex doll fired shot after shot, moving closer, each one finding its target. Green jittered and jived, the bullets tearing through synthetic flesh, ripping through his case-hardened frame, doing untold damage to his internal processors.
He stood, knocking over the table. He tried to reach into his shoulder holster for his gun, but his movements were off. He was herky-jerky, all kinds of wiring going bad all at once. Blue had seen it before when these things got hit. She stood just a foot away from him now, her back to Blue, nude, firing point blank into Green’s chest. She never went for his head.
She knows, Blue thought. She knows there’s nothing important in his head. How the fuck does a sex doll know that?
Nine emptied Blue’s gun into Green. When the trigger clicked, she threw the gun away. It made a solid clunk when it hit the floor. She slid her hand into hapless Green’s holster and took his gun. Now she was fully loaded again.
Blue had to move. If he stayed where he was, in another minute he’d be dead. He jumped up and charged across the room.
Ahead, he saw Nine turn, satisfied she had finished Green. Now she was looking for Blue. But Blue was too fast. He dove at her, tackling her and knocking her backwards. The wooden work table collapsed to the floor. They fell on top of it.
Blue landed on top of Nine.
He kneeled above her. To beat her, he would have to tear away the flesh, somehow pull out the plating, rip some wires out. Hand to hand combat with these things was a mess - you needed a buzz saw to get in there. He was naked with only his hands.
It would never work. He had to get that gun away from her.
Too late. She smacked him across the head with the butt end of it. She hit him again, hard. For a moment, his vision blurred. There were two of her, three of her. She hit him again. And again. He fell over sideways, landing in a heap on the bare floor.
She clambered on top of him. With one hand, she choked him. With the other, she pointed the gun at his forehead. Unlike with Green, one shot would do it. There were two of her, then just one, then two again. Blue shook his head to clear his vision.
“Nine,” he said, his voice a rasp. She was strong. She could rip his throat out, if she wanted. “I thought we had something between us.”
“We did. But that’s over now.”
“Not for me.”
A sound caught his attention. He glanced at Green. Green was on the floor, just a few feet away, no longer trying to find his gun. He was no longer doing anything that might pass for a human behavior. His head snapped to the left, over and over again. He made a loud clicking sound. His hands clenched and unclenched. Black smoke seeped from bullet holes in his chest. Something was on fire in there.
Blue looked back at Nine. She was full of surprises. She hadn’t hesitated to kill Green. But for some reason, she was waiting to kill Blue. He should already be dead.
“Green,” he said, “is in terminal shutdown. Any minute now, he’s going to self destruct. When he does, he’s going to explode. I’ve seen it before. It’s a big explosion. Much bigger than the bomb inside you. That way, no battlefield enemy can get the technology. You see?”
She glanced over at Green.
Blue made his move. With all his strength, he grabbed her waist and heaved her into the air. She was light. She flew several feet and landed on her back.
He rolled to his right, leapt up, and dove for the window. He crashed through it, arms out in front, shattered glass going everywhere. He fell to the pavement, bounced up, and took off running across the wet parking lot, arms bleeding, bare feet on gravel.
* * *
From her back, Nine watched Mr. Blue go through the window. He had surprised her. He had reacted very quickly, much faster than Mr. Green.
She turned to Green. Yes, he was really smoking now. He was no longer moving. His systems realized that a catastrophic failure had occurred. Once his central processing unit shut down, then there would be trouble.
She jumped up, grabbed her discarded mini-dress off the floor, and took Blue’s telephone off the night table. She stepped through the shattered window and walked nude across the parking lot, gun in one hand, dress and mobile phone in the other. The blacktop was wet, but the rain itself had stopped. She glanced at the sky. Dark clouds skidded across the moon.
She stepped quickly. There wasn’t much time.
She was twenty steps away when the motel room behind her exploded in a flash of light and sound. She didn’t even look back.
Blue was ahead, just across the parking lot. He approached her, also nude, walking slow, unhurried. She swung the gun in his direction. If he got any ideas, she would put a bullet through his bare chest. He raised his hands in the air, but he smiled.
“Number Nine,” he said. “I think we’ve got something special. Some little spark between us.”
“Blue,” she said. “The next spark you see will be the muzzle flash from this gun.”
“I mean it, Nine. You’re the woman for me. I feel this electricity…”
She laughed. “Keep dreaming,” she said as she walked past him.
“I can help you,” he said.
She stopped. “How can you do that?”
“The code. The code to disarm the bomb.”
“Do you have it?”
“No, but I can get it.”
She started walking again. “So can I.”
“We’ll meet again,” he said.
She waved a hand. “If we do, I’ll have to kill you.”
Behind her, sirens already approached. People began to shout and scream. She heard running footsteps and a woman shrieking.
“Hey Nine!” Blue shouted. “Nine! Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”
She glanced back at him. He stood nude in the parking lot. He could be a sculpture of a naked barbarian warrior. Behind him, a car had caught fire. As she watched, its gas tank blew up, sending a plume of fire into the night sky. Blue barely moved.
“My dad taught me,” she said.
Up ahead, the parking lot ended. Through some bushes, she could see a quiet, leafy side street. She kept walking.
* * *
The man’s name was Darryl Blauer.
He wore a yellow hardhat and was halfway up a telephone pole in a quiet industrial neighborhood, about ten blocks east of Highway 41. There’d been an explosion over by the highway a few minutes back, but he didn’t see that as any of his business. In fact, an explosion was a good thing. It would keep the cops busy for a little while.
He put the whole thing out of his mind. He worked quickly, in case another squall of rain decided to blow in. The explosion didn’t interest him. At least, it didn’t until he saw what emerged in its aftermath. A young woman walked up the deserted street right toward him. She wore a sheer mini-dress, and nothing else. She didn’t even have shoes on her feet. Right away, he recognized her for what she was.
In fact, he had an older model at home who looked a lot like her. He called her Mandy, and she was his sweet, sweet girl. She was his confidante, and she was his slut. She was his slave. She was anything he wanted her to be.
“Here comes the reason for the explosion,” he said to himself, a pair of wire cutters held between his teeth. He’d done a lot of reading about Sexbots when he entered the secondary market for one. It was no small thing to own a Sexbot. Shooting wars had started between rival drug gangs over the possession of these things.
He grinned. That was none of his business, either.
Darryl was good at minding his own business. Right now, he was doing what he did for business these days - data mining. It was a pretty good gig. What he did was he came out to quiet streets with computer hard drives in nondescript black boxes, and wired them directly into the public fiber optic lines. They were data collectors that he had designed himself. Interceptors, he called them. He left them wired in for a week or so, although they would generally fill up in a couple of days. Then he came back and picked them up again. He tended to work at night, just like now.
The interceptors collected every piece of raw data that went through that section of the fiber optic line. On one of his home computers, he had an open source packet analyzer that made the data readable for him. Lots of good stuff flooded into the interceptors. Credit card numbers. Social security numbers. Email addresses and passwords. Lot and lots of photographs and videos. Nudies, a lot of them.
A lot of unusable junk passed through, too. It wasn’t like it was all gold.
He didn’t act on the good stuff. He sold it wholesale to a few different people he knew, who themselves turned around and sold it retail to the people who acted on it. All kinds of scams were possible with the data that Darryl collected. Identity theft. Blackmail. Credit card fraud. Con jobs. Break-ins. You name it.
When he installed the boxes, he set it up to look like he was a technician from a telephone company out there, fixing the lines. He drove a van with the words Cisco Communications on the side. He used all the light he needed. He wore his bright yellow hardhat. Hide in plain sight. That was his motto.
If anybody ever asked him what he was doing, he said something like, “Oh, we got a call to come out here and take a look at these lines. Some of your neighbors are down.”
It was gibberish. It didn’t mean anything, and yet it worked wonders. Between the van, and the uniform he wore, and the climbing spikes on his boots, and all his gear, and the fact of how weird looking he was, people were easily convinced.
People rarely even talked to him anyway. He’d been shot in the face in Afghanistan ten years before. Now his face was permanently scarred and twisted. He wore Coke-bottle glasses because he’d lost so much of his vision.
He looked weird, to put it mildly. He looked like a nightmare. When he first got back to the United States, and when they finally let him out of military prison, he would go to bars and stores and malls and restaurants. People would look away. And he would say to them, very loud:
“What are you afraid of? You wanted that war. This is what it looks like.”
But this Sexbot here came right up to talk to him. She didn’t look away at all. She wasn’t exactly a person, but Darryl didn’t mind. She was better than a person. Except for a few subtle differences, she could almost be Mandy’s twin.
No, that wasn’t true, he had to admit. The only regret he had about Mandy was how sometimes she seemed like a living mannequin. She was an early model. Her facial expressions and body movement seemed stiff at times. You could see that Mandy was fake, if that’s what you wanted to see. This one was newer. She seemed perfectly natural. She could be the real person Mandy was based on.
She stood below him, looking up. From this angle, he could see down her cleavage. He noticed that she held a pistol in one hand, and a cell phone in the other.
Damn, these things were advanced nowadays. Mandy could make basic phone calls, but nowhere in her programming was there any command to carry a gun. Darryl would love to teach Mandy to shoot, but Mandy ignored his guns as if they weren’t even there.
“Excuse me,” the Sexbot said.
“Hello, little lady,” Darryl said
She smiled. “Hi. This may seem strange, but I wonder if you can help me?”
“Darling, I’ll help you with anything you like.” He pulled his last data collector free from its wiring, slipped it into his backpack, and slowly clambered down to her level. He unclipped his harness and faced her. He stood nearly a foot taller than she did. This close, she was beautiful.
He smiled, mindful of his freak show face, but also aware that she probably wouldn’t notice it or care. “What’s going on? What can I help you with?”
“Are you a telephone technician?” she said.
He nodded. “Something like that.”
She held up the phone. “A man made a call on this phone earlier tonight. The number isn’t saved in the history, but I need to find out the number he called and who it belongs to. Can you do that?”
Darryl smile broadened. The wheels were already turning in his mind. Hell, this was just like talking to a real person. She was a lot smarter than Mandy. That was okay. And maybe there were some things he didn’t know about how to handle these new ones, but once he got the hang of it, she would probably respond to orders just as she should. It’d be quite a thing to get her back to the shack, get the girls together, and put them through their paces. One Sexbot had been a dream come true. Two would be…
He didn’t know what it would be. There were no words for it.
“I can trace any call,” he said. “But I can’t do it here. I don’t have the equipment with me. If you want to find out who your man called, you need to come back to my house.”
“What is your name?” the Sexbot said.
“You can call me Darryl.”
She smiled, an amazing, pretty smile. “Thank you, Darryl.”
He smiled right back, no longer the least bit self-conscious about his teeth, his face, or his eyes. He knew she would love him no matter what he looked like.
“At your service, my lady.”
* * *
Nine rode out into the country with the man called Darryl, the one who had climbed down from the telephone pole.
She sat quietly in the passenger seat as the city streets turned to suburbs, then to a dark two lane road, a long ribbon, flanked by thick, dense underbrush on either side. They drove thirty minutes, with no hint of stopping. After a while, there were no more cars, no more houses, no lights but the headlights of his truck.
“You live a long way out,” she said, just to make conversation.
“Out in the swamps,” he said. “With the alligators. That’s how I like it.”
One part of her realized that once upon a time, if she had found herself in this truck, driving with this man through the dark to “the swamps,” as the man called it, she would be terrified. The man was tall and broad, but strange looking. His face was badly scarred. He was missing several teeth. The ones he still had were green going on black. He wore thick glasses, and behind the fish bowl lenses, his two eyes seemed to look in different directions.
But she wasn’t afraid. She was relieved. The further she rode with Darryl, the further away she was from Mr. Blue, and from the company.
“What generation are you?” Darryl said, nonchalant, as if asking her what she did for a living.
“Generation?”
“Yeah, don’t you ladies come in generations? I’m pretty sure that’s how they market you, right? By generation?”
She looked at him.
He smiled, showing those nasty teeth. “Oh, come on now, I know what you are. How could I not? Something blows up in the middle of the night, and a beautiful, brand new Sexbot walks up to me out of the darkness five minutes later. She’s carrying a gun, and she wants me to trace a telephone call. I know what you are, and I’m guessing you’re on the run. Girls like you drive men to murder, and to madness. And also to greatness. So, go ahead. Tell me. What generation are you?”
She shrugged. If this swamp creature man recognized her, did that mean everyone she met would recognize her? Well, she might as well go with it, for now.
“I’m the ninth generation.”
“Wow. The ninth generation. I had no idea they had gotten that far along. Do you have a name?”
“Nine.”
He sort of half-laughed. “Nine?”
“Number Nine.”
“So they didn’t even give you a name, eh? Just because you’re from the ninth generation? They call you Number Nine?”
“I am the ninth generation.”
“You’re…”
“I’m the one. The prototype.”
He stared at her. He had turned down a dirt road, and now they bumped and bounced in the ruts. “Someone is missing you hard right now. Someone with a lot of money. Someone with a lot of…”
“Are you planning to turn me in?”
He shook his head. He steered the van up to a ramshackle house surrounded by deep, overgrown grass. Spanish moss hung thick and heavy from the oak trees above them. She just caught a glimpse of the house before Darryl killed the headlights.
“No. I’m planning to keep you. This is my home. Your home too, if you like. Come on inside. I want to show you something.”
Nine sighed. “That’s what they all say.”
* * *