In my line of work you get to learn a lot about the universe.
I don't mean the sort of stuff that cosmologists go on about. Don't get me wrong, it's all mighty interesting to think about how the universe finite in size, yet its boundaries are endless at the same time; and how it is curved, so that you end up right where you started if you fly in a straight line long enough and far enough. Not that I can imagine how a three-dimensional space can be curved back upon itself in the fourth dimension without getting a headache, of course.
No, one of the most important things I've learned about the universe while bouncing around in it is this: while the universe may not be infinitely large, it does have an infinite number of ways in which to surprise you.
Take Kr'wolth, for example. It's a small rim world that you probably have never heard of. I once dropped off a shipment of lab equipment there that I never could make heads or tails of. The cargo manifest was no help: I still don't know what a non-linear protein splicer is supposed to be used for, and that was about the simplest description on the documents. So I was expecting the Kr'wolti (or whatever they call themselves) to have at least some sort of high-tech elements to their society, but when I landed there was no trace of any of that.
What I found instead was a bunch of primitive, hairy bipeds who communicated in grunts and groans. I ended up doing most of my business through the airfield computer, which had been a very decent model about thirty years ago. It wasn't long before I realized my chances of finding a new cargo there were slim to none, but it took me another day to find out why: the bipeds were not the dominant life form on Kr'wolth at all. It was the parasites that lived inside them: highly intelligent parasites who controlled their hosts telepathically. Less than twenty minutes later I was in orbit, limping out of there on my ultimate-last-resort emergency fuel and taking my losses like a man. That's how badly those things frightened me.
So you'd think that after that sort of experience (and several others like it) I would be ready when the universe threw me another one of those weird curve balls.
You would be wrong.
* * *
For a moment I stood there, stunned. The shock of what I was seeing and hearing was simply too much. Then things started to click into place, and every click was a blow that hit me square in the stomach.
Back on Radix, Deke had offered to fix me up with something young and tight. What was it again that he said?
"How about a droid?" he suggested.
"Hell, no," I said. "A plastic animated fuck toy doesn't do it for me."
"Obviously, you haven't tried the latest," he replied. "Plastic was replaced with synthflesh ages ago. Impossible to tell apart from the real thing. Their behavior is completely life-like, too. Especially with the, ehm, new software extensions."
"You mean AI extensions? Those are illegal."
He'd just shrugged. "Maybe. Lots of things are. But in the privacy of your own ship, between systems..."
"Are you kidding? It'll wake up and then I've got an emerging AI on my hands! And even so, how good is it really going to be? I'll tell you; it'll still be a plastic fuck toy."
"I'm still willing to bet that you won't be able to tell a state-of-the-art pleasure droid from the real thing," he said.
What a sucker I had been. Even the names had been part of it.
Deke Ryder.
Anne Ryder.
Anne.
Droid.
Android.
The oldest and lamest wordplay ever. Any idiot could have seen it coming from lightyears away. But I hadn't. Which meant I was an even bigger fool than I thought possible.
"Deke, you filthy piece of..." I began.
"Are you referring to your cargo broker on Radix?" Business Suit inquired politely. "Yes, he was quite proficient."
He looked at Anne, who stood there like a statue.
"The unit you shipped here was built on the chassis of the latest model pleasure droid," he continued. "Its synthflesh is virtually impossible to tell apart from the real thing, even for a trained expert. It's organic in nature, of course. Vat-grown. And its various bodily functions are not just emulated. Not for the most part, anyway. It even has a fully functional digestive system as a part of its power source. It breathes, eats and eliminates in ways that are almost completely natural."
All I could do was stare. I had trusted Deke. I could not believe how easily I had been suckered, and how hard I'd fallen for the whole charade. And how much it hurt.
"Anne..." I whispered.
I was numb with the cruelty of the enormous joke that had been played on me.
"No... No. No."
Business Suit raised his eyebrows.
"You seem rather upset, captain Ross."
He peered at me closely.
"Ah, I think I understand. You thought of this unit as human, didn't you? Could it be that you actually have developed an affection for it? Romantic feelings, perhaps? Well, in that case I can certainly understand your disappointment."
I told Business Suit what he could do with himself.
"An interesting suggestion," he said. "And who knows, if it were anatomically possible it might even be quite enjoyable. Unfortunately, I am not quite that limber. Instead I prefer other forms of gratification."
He glanced at Anne, who still stood there, motionless as a statue.
"Which reminds me. You did, ehm, shall we say, enjoy, miss Ryder's various features on the way here, I assume? After all, her chassis is quite attractive, and we left the sexual subroutines of the original software fully intact, so the unit does possess the necessary skills. Did it perform to your complete satisfaction?"
I just glared at him.
Business Suit shrugged.
"It doesn't matter, " he said. "We'll get all the necessary details from the unit's log files. But you shouldn't blame yourself. We designed this droid to fool even the trained eye."
The thin smile flashed on and off.
"You see, the unit itself is completely unaware of its artificial nature. The new AI extensions we are pioneering here are really quite revolutionary. I won't bore you with the technical details, but at the basis of its behavioral algorithms lie actual human memories, drawn from real humans and implanted into the droid. Heavily edited, of course, but enough to produce a behavior so natural that even the unit itself can't deduce its true nature."
The thin smile came and went, not leaving a single trace.
"It's not a new idea, of course," he continued. "It has been tried many times in the past, but the completeness of the implanted identity always fell somewhat short of what was required for a full personality development. Until now."
He looked at me thoughtfully.
"Unfortunately, the completeness of our own success now presents us with a small problem."
"And what's that?" I said, trying to pull myself together.
Business Suit seemed to like hearing himself talk. That might be a good thing, although right now I had no idea yet how it might help me.
"The question of what to do with you, of course," he said. "The planned course of events was for you to unload your ship and then leave, blissfully unaware of the nature of your cargo and not emotionally attached to it. Instead we are now faced with your fixation with this droid and your intention to keep it with you. This is... inconvenient."
"So?"
He nodded.
"Yes. Exactly so."
Almost casually he reached into his suit pocket, took a tiny gun, aimed it and fired. A blue bold shot out and hit me full in the chest. It felt like slamming into a polycrete wall at full tilt, including the stars that exploded before my eyes and the blackness that followed.
* * *
The first thing I realized was that I felt terrible.
Over the years there have been a few times when I've woken up in pretty bad shape. It comes with the job: you drink the local hooch, maybe you get mugged, you catch a weird bug, or the local food turns out to have something funny in it. It's happens, and it had left me with a certain amount of experience in this area. Mostly bad experiences, but that's one of the hazards of the job.
Yet this time was particularly bad. My pounding head felt like it was cast in a block of polycrete, but that was the least it. I could breathe, and it felt like I could open my eyes if I tried, but that was about it. I couldn't even feel my arms and legs, let alone move them.
I seemed to be sitting in some kind of high-backed chair. Other than that, I couldn't make out much, so I tried to open my eyes. That worked. I blinked a few times to clear my blurry vision, then looked around as well as I could. My head wouldn't move.
The room I found myself in was mostly white. It was brightly lit, and various tables and pieces of electronic equipment and computer systems took up most of the floor. A row of standard shipping containers stood against one of the walls. They were normal three by four by five foot containers, but they looked awfully familiar. I was willing to bet that they had come from the Slowboat's cargo hold.
One of the containers had been opened and some of the contents had been taken out and put onto a nearby table. Whatever was in the plastyne bags looked like no environmental control unit I'd ever seen: silvery, hemispherical shapes with bundles of thin, gleaming, metallic wires attached to their flat sides... I had no idea what those things were. For a moment I sat there wondering what they reminded me of, until I realized: they looked a lot like human brains, complete with spinal cords and bundles of nerves attached to them.
That made me angry. Business Suit had mentioned AI extensions in Anne's software, and these units obviously represented more of that sort of thing. All forms of AI, potentially self-aware or not, are highly illegal almost everywhere. If I'd been caught, no amount of explanation would have kept me out of a penal colony for the rest of my life.
"Nice mess you've gotten yourself into here, Harvey," I said to myself.
Myself nodded sagely.
"Yes," he said. "Well done. Now will you please stop bellyaching and focus on how to get out of it?"
I sighed. Myself was right, as usual. I hate it when that happens, but I had to agree with him.
The man who stood bent over one of the tables was dressed in a standard lab coat. He was tall, his hair was black and very short, and his shoulders were stooped as if he had been bending over that table for far too many years. A sheet covered a familiar-looking shape, and when he moved, I saw Anne's blond curls spilled across the table. She was breathing again, but her face was an emotionless, expressionless mask.
"Hey," I tried to shout. It came out half as a croak, half as a cough.
The man by the table looked up, then pushed a button.
"He's awake, sir," he said.
"Good," said Business Suit's voice from a speaker somewhere. "I'll be there shortly."
