Android X: The Complete Series Page 19

She entered the street and mixed in with passing pedestrians. Ahead of her, she heard two men talking.

  “Crazy how Crenshaw took down the network,” one man said. “All because of some data.”

  “Why doesn’t the UEA just hand over what she’s looking for? That’ll make her go away. It’s probably just a black box.”

  Jazzlyn remembered Ballixter’s black box in her pocket, and quickened her pace down the street.

  Chapter 10

  “Come on, Shortcut,” X said as they walked the streets of the commercial district.

  “What did you have in mind?” Shortcut asked. “We’ve been walking around for the last two hours.”

  “We keep our eyes open,” X said, scanning the area. He stopped in front of a coffee shop. He looked next door to a bakery, decided there was nothing there worth investigating, and kept moving.

  The streets, which were normally bustling and full of people and flying cars, were empty and quiet. Digital screens were blank. The tall, glass buildings that surrounded them, normally lit up on every floor, were dark and ominous. The watery exhaust from recent traffic still hung in the air, so thick they could taste it. The sound of their footsteps echoed on the asphalt as they explored avenues, street by street, block by block, leaving no inch of city untouched.

  They walked several more blocks and passed a man who was walking quickly.

  “Excuse me,” X said.

  The man looked at them nervously. “Look, buddy. I’ve got to get home—”

  X grabbed him gently. “Seen any androids lately?”

  “Where have you been these last few hours?”

  “Where?” X asked.

  The man pointed uphill. “One of them was stomping around by the museum.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “It was a she. How do I know you’re not going to rip me apart?”

  “I would have done it by now.”

  The man whimpered, and X let him go.

  “I think we found our first android,” X said.

  Shortcut stroked his chin. “I get it. We’re hunting the old-fashioned way, like people used to do hundreds of years ago.”

  “I suppose you could say that,” X said.

  “You know, grab a buddy, a few dogs, a six-pack, and go shoot some pheasants in a marsh for a day or two. Pretty romantic.”

  They walked in silence for a while. X tried to imagine the android and anticipate her behavior. If she was anything like Brockway in Aruba, then their chances were neutral, slightly unfavorable. If she was anything like Xadrian, his algorithm gave him favorable scenarios. He stored them away for later use.

  “That guy back there was really scared of you, X.”

  “Everyone is scared,” X said. “I encountered a gang of humans earlier who tried to hurt me. They won’t be the last.”

  “Crenshaw is really doing some damage, huh?” Shortcut asked. “Who knew it would be the daughter of the great doctor?”

  X ignored the comment. “What happened to you earlier, Shortcut?”

  Shortcut looked like he had been hit by a car. “W-What are you talking about?”

  “First, you told me that you had to handle something ‘personal.’ Then, when you returned to the headquarters, you looked like you had just come from a confrontation.”

  “Nothing happened, X. I just came across someone from my past, that’s all.”

  “Did you roll around in the dirt together?”

  “Heh. I guess you could say that.”

  “I have a built-in lie detector, remember?”

  Shortcut cursed under his breath. “I’m sick.”

  X stopped. “What?”

  “I’m sick. I got a bad diagnosis this morning.”

  “Like a cold? Influenza?”

  “Worse.”

  “Is it hereditary?”

  “My designer genes are too good for hereditary diseases. My parents made sure of that.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m using unapproved body enhancements. My nanos found cancer this morning.”

  “Shortcut …”

  “I’m healed. Don’t worry. But it could come back any time. I was trying to find my doctor earlier today.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “He wasn’t available.”

  “Why didn’t he see you? This is serious. Is he on vacation?”

  “He lawyered up for some reason.”

  “Does he think you’re going to sue him?”

  “I doubt it. He’s spooked about something, but I don’t know what. I tried to go to his office, but his attorney is controlling all of his communications. I went to visit her, but she and her security guard roughed me up pretty bad.”

  “You should have told me.”

  “And ruin your focus on the mission? Yeah, right.” Shortcut kicked a nearby can into a sewer grate. “I’ve got nothing but respect for you, X. But you’re an android. I’m just a measly human. With enhancements though …” He spread out his hands and looked at the sky. “I’m someone. I feel like I’m getting the best of both worlds: the emotions of humanity and the intelligence of androids. When I’m at my best, when I’m hacking—when I’m with you—nothing can stop me.”

  “Except cancer,” X said, frowning. “Or worse. Is that the price you want to pay?”

  “The alternative is mediocrity,” Shortcut said. “If it weren’t for the enhancements, I’d still be waiting tables in the cafeteria. Or running some plain-vanilla robotics business. All I know is that when you want something, you gotta pay a price for it.”

  “You’re naive. Life isn’t that simple.”

  “If you knew where I’ve come from and what I’ve been through, you would understand.”

  X folded his arms. “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  Shortcut laughed. “We’d be here forever and I’d bore you.”

  “You’re avoiding my question.”

  “We’re on a mission, remember? But listen: you can’t tell Fahrens.”

  “I’m obligated to report this.”

  “You can’t! I’m trying to work this out. Just—just give me a few days and then I’ll tell him myself.”

  “What did you have planned?” X asked.

  “I don’t know yet,” Shortcut said, looking down. “But I’ll figure it out.”

  They heard screaming, and a group of people ran past them. X drew his guns. “When we apprehend Crenshaw, you’ll tell Fahrens yourself. Deal?”

  Shortcut drew his electric rod. “Deal.”

  The United Earth Alliance Museum of Natural History was a sprawling architectural wonder that took up many, many blocks on a man-made island in the middle of the Atlantic. With an unprecedented budget made up of contributions from every country in the world, the Council had been given as many resources as it needed to build the largest and most comprehensive museum in the history of civilization.

  The museum was a white building in the 20th century style with Doric columns, a rotunda made of pure gold, tall windows spaced every few feet, and a beautiful front lawn with fountains and hedges and rows and rows of flowers. The park was empty and the granite stairs that led up to the front door were littered with android parts.

  Shortcut tapped his electric rod against his palm. “I’m getting tired of hunting androids.”

  “As long as they’re rogues,” X said, “it never gets old.”

  “Nice thing about being a computer,” Shortcut said as they walked up the stairs. “You can do the same thing over and over and never get bored. Me? I need some variety in my life.”

  X studied the big brown doors. He scanned them but saw no threats on the inside. “We’re clear to enter.”

  “I wonder what the place is going to look like.”

  They pushed open the doors and entered the lobby. The doors slammed behind them. A Tyrannosaurus Rex hung from the ceiling. Several wires dangled next to it, as if there should have been something next to the dinosaur but was missing. The room smelled like ammonia,
probably from a recent cleaning. They stood before a maze of stanchions that led to the front desk, and beyond the desk, they saw a grand staircase leading into the museum.

  Several android guards lay destroyed on the floor.

  X bent over them. “Security attendants,” he said. He picked up their circuitry. One of the circuit boards broke in half as he held it. “Death from blunt trauma.”

  Shortcut gulped. “What kind of weapon could have caused it?”

  “Whatever it was, it was huge.”

  They walked up the grand staircase and came to several doors, each marked with the names of continents.

  Entering the North America exhibit, they passed a display of a forest: colorful butterflies flitted around, turtles basked in artificial light, and trout, bass, and carp swirled around in a freshwater tank. Sound effects of crickets and frogs played from speakers overhead, and a dark treescape was painted on the walls, imitating the forest at sunrise. The museum filtered in the synthetic odors of flowers, mud, and silt through vents in the ceiling—so much that it felt like they were actually in the forest. Even the floor was raised and bumpy like dried mud.

  “It’s like stepping back in time,” Shortcut said. He came to a covered glass table that honored the trees of the Pacific Northwest. He peered through a display of miniaturized Douglas fir trees and saw a toy bobcat among them. “I don’t get it. If you’re an android looking to cause trouble, why would you come to a museum? I mean, I love museums. I spent a lot of time in this place as a kid. But why here?”

  “Why does Crenshaw do anything she does?” X asked.

  They walked farther back in time. The temperature in the room dropped, and the speakers played howling wind. They passed life-sized Neanderthal statues huddled over a fire. The fire, a mess of sticks and fake, smoldering rocks, crackled and glowed every few seconds.

  “Hard to believe that used to be us,” Shortcut said. “Many, many, many, years ago.”

  X kept walking. He had no attachment to Neanderthals and only focused on the task at hand, scanning everything around him.

  “The place is surprisingly clean,” X said. “I would have expected the android to make a mess. The displays are untouched.”

  “Maybe the android didn’t go through this display. Maybe she went through one of the other continents first.”

  The environment grew warmer again and they walked up a spiral staircase with illuminated steps. When they came to the second floor, the area lit up, revealing a long seascape and an orange, cloudy sunset. As they walked forward, it seemed as if they were walking on water even though it was hardwood floor. With every step, the floor registered their weight and played a sploshing sound. They heard gentle waves swirling around them. In between the waves, they heard what sounded like voices, cars, airplanes—the noise of civilization. But just as quickly as the familiar sounds came, they faded into the ocean waves.

  A deep male voice narrated as they continued down the seemingly endless room.

  “Look around. In the exact place you’re walking, there used to be a city.”

  The ground blinked beneath them and the dark blue water became clear, revealing a city just below them. They saw a boardwalk, a beach, people riding bicycles on the street, people sitting on benches and talking on their smartphones, and land-based cars clogging the streets.

  “2050,” the narrator continued. “The year the world changed. Scientists had warned of this date for decades; pundits had ignored it. But despite what everyone had said about the fate of the Earth, it didn’t happen the way anyone expected. We lost inches of land in San Francisco. San Diego. Fort Lauderdale. Corpus Christi. A particularly heavy year of carbon dioxide production, after decades of pollution, combined with exacerbated ice cap melting to create the first catastrophic effect of a rising sea level. It was no longer a myth; it was real. Coastal cities were on the verge of disappearing. And what did we do? It took a century, but we took our cities back.”

  The water washed away and sounded as if it were flowing down a drain. The drain burped, and the city sprung up around them. Shortcut jumped back as a holographic truck barreled through him. X kept walking, unfazed.

  “We did the impossible,” the narrator continued. “After all, even the most sensible scientists said that the effects of man-made climate change were irreversible. But the rise of android robotics saved us. The androids, in their quest for never-ending intelligence, devised strategies for cleanup and helped us repair humanity’s destruction to the planet faster than humanity could have ever done on its own. Our future was bright, and for the first time in a long time, we didn’t have to worry about living in the dark world that so many books and movies had predicted. But just when we solved one problem, another rose in its place.”

  X and Shortcut ducked at the sound of several large explosions.

  “Androids became an integral part of our society, so much that we trusted them with everything. Our financial information. Our lives. Our secrets … When they demanded independent android rights and the right to live alongside humanity peacefully without serving us, we revoked what meager rights we had already given them. But the androids were smarter than anyone could have ever anticipated.”

  Several androids in steel-blue armor and with yellow glowing eyes tracked across the beach in a weird, robotic gait, shooting innocent people as the sky turned pink and fiery.

  “Androids showed us the worst parts of ourselves. Since we had given them access to every part of our lives, they used our information against us. They disabled our Internet. They killed our pets. They raided our cities and tortured us. They burned every city in the world and changed the face of the Earth with their destruction. But despite all of the carnage, we still would not give the androids what they asked for. Perhaps it was the inexhaustible human spirit; perhaps it was stupidity. When the climax reached its worst, when the androids created their hyper city in the Arctic, when they aimed the world’s stockade of nuclear weapons upon itself, we beat them. They were all connected in a single network, like a collective mind. We destroyed it. Somehow, we won. It was like the ending to a blockbuster science fiction movie, except this time we had to keep living after the credits rolled.”

  They came to the end of the walkway. X pushed open the door and they entered a black room. They couldn’t see anything, but they could hear the sounds of a forest all around them.

  The narrator picked up again. “We won’t go into the barren period, the time when humanity lived without robotics and dialed back the historical clock of civilization at least one hundred years. We were too scared of robotics. But as we failed to progress as a species, we learned that we couldn’t live without them, either.”

  The darkness gave way, revealing the modern-day UEA ahead of them. They saw the entire man-made island stretching across the Atlantic under a clear blue sky. Skyscrapers rose all around the city, and flying cars zipped through the skies. X and Shortcut descended the guided walkway into a street filled with digital screens where people passed by, their lenses glowing in their eyes.

  X thought it interesting that despite being one hundred and fifty years in the future, humanity still had the same look and spirit as they did in 2050. He wondered if some things ever changed.

  “The singularity brought the world together in a way that was previously impossible,” the narrator said. “Although the world had finally recognized its diverse racial, ethnic and international identity, it could now be classified into two sides: those who wanted to continue life without robotics and those who believed that humans and androids could find a way to live together. The United Earth Alliance was born when the countries of the world decided to put their future into the hands of one world government that supported android technology and had the power and authority to protect humanity from it. The UEA was built on a man-made island in the middle of the Atlantic—a modern day Atlantis.

  Digital screens with members of the Council blinked into life. “The Council, driven by ambition, love, patriot
ism to the world, and a yearning desire for peace. It consisted of one representative from every continent, with two-year term restrictions and limited governance that encouraged democracy but also respected religious and ethnic differences. There’s not more left to say that you don’t already know. But our future is bright no matter where we’re going.”

  The displays around them powered down, and symphonic music played as credits scrolled across the walls.

  X looked around. “Odd how this place is still running. It’s as if the android left everything alone. Where could she be?”

  They climbed another floor past a desert display of previously extinct creatures that had been brought back to life by human scientists. They passed an exhibit of live desert scorpions and snakes who sunned in a herpetarium glass structure. A rattlesnake hissed at Shortcut as he passed.

  “Never seen one of those alive before,” Shortcut said. “The natural world really must have been a cool place before all the crises started.”

  “I wouldn’t know. One more floor and we’ll be at the top of the museum. We’ll probably find her there.”

  “X,” Shortcut said, shaking his head, “sometimes talking to you is like talking to a brick wall. With reinforced steel under it.”

  They entered a display that showcased technology: digital screens, lenses, circuits. In the middle of the room was a mastodon.

  “What’s this mastodon doing here?” Shortcut asked. “It doesn’t even belong.”

  They saw an exhibit featuring Dr. Crenshaw. The glass was broken, and inside was a replica of Dr. Crenshaw’s home laboratory; X recognized it from his earliest memories. He had been here when he had received a memory upgrade in the UEA tunnels. It was just as he remembered, and it still smelled of incense and chai. Android replicas lay on tables throughout the lab, their skulls open for analysis. Instead of the clean, organized feel it had during X’s memory, however, the office was disheveled. Buckets of android parts were dumped on the floor and Dr. Crenshaw’s desk was turned over and drooling out papers.

  A wax statue of Dr. Crenshaw stood in the middle of the room. He had a digital screen in his hands, a stylus in his pocket and a smug smile on his face. The statue was eerily accurate, and it looked as if it would open its mouth and speak any moment. At its feet, an android with long black hair was crying.