They took a taxi down to the bus station and waited in long lines to pay their fare. Cindy looked at her watch: five o’clock. Aaron seemed nervous, but whenever she would turn to ask him if he was all right, he would just bite his lip and nod.
“Are you sure we have to do this?” he said, again.
She gave him an exasperated look, but paused as she watched him following her blindly down to the terminal. He was staring out the windows and she could see he was giving it all his effort not cry. She stopped at put her arm around his shoulders. “Come on, we’re almost there. If she’s going to be anywhere, she’ll be somewhere around Betelgeuse VII. If not, it’s a good place to start looking.”
“I just,” he started, but stopped as the signal to start boarding blasted on the intercom. The other passengers pushed them onto the bus; Aaron took a seat to the back of the bus as soon as he could.
“You just…” she prompted him, but he kept his lips shut and stared out the window for the remainder of the ride. Betelgeuse VII was one of the quieter stations, but dark and dimly filled with neon life. Occasionally a dark hole in the wall would appear as the restrooms, telephones, or an exit transporter. Cindy glanced at her watch as she led Aaron towards the taxi terminal: seven thirty.
“We’d better go to a hotel for the night. I don’t have much cash with me but I’m sure a small motel should be sufficient. We’ll start looking tomorrow. Any ideas where to start?” She turned around at this question to face a multitude of strangers continuing to walk along their paths towards an exit. She glanced around, trying not to be pulled by the traffic, but couldn’t find Aaron anywhere. “Damn,” she swore quietly and tried pushing herself upstream to a wall. The people ignored her as she scrambled to get to a quiet place to think. After noticing a small black hole labeled women’s bathroom, she snuck into the florescent-lit room and stared into the mirror.
“What are you doing here?” a girl asked. Her hair was dyed a bright fire engine red and she leaned against the sink to look Cindy in the face as she said this. Her eyes were green and glowed softly.
Cindy looked at the girl nonchalantly. “Going to pee. What do you expect?” To make her point, she started walking towards the stall, but the girl grabbed her elbow and pulled hard.
“I like you. You’re not one of those stodgy old adults. You’ve got spunk and class. Hi, I’m Trish.”
Cindy gave her a half smile. “Megan.”
Trish gave her half a nod and pulled up beside Cindy. “You should really change your name. It seems so…blah. You need something with more attitude. Hey, you want to see something really cool?” she asked suddenly.
Cindy laughed. “Sure, why not?”
“Follow me. But whatever you do, don’t talk.” Trish led Cindy into the far bathroom stall and pulled the toilet from the wall like a chair. Underneath the apparatus was a small ring, which Trish pulled and opened a staircase. She ran down the stairs with expert speed, then turned around and put her finger to her lips before continuing down. Cindy looked about her for something to take with, but could find no pipes; at this point Trish was already out of sight. Cindy followed quickly, trying not to touch anything about her into the pitch black.
Cindy felt like she was in a broken film and the same scene was playing over and over again. She was still in the dark and she continued for what felt like hours down the staircase. The only measure of time she had was the steady decrease in temperature. Finally, she spotted a light at the bottom of the staircase. As she approached, she realized that two people were talking and as she reached the rim of the circle of light, she could hear what they were saying.
“Well, what do we do about her? We still haven’t come to a consensus.” Though she couldn’t see him, she could tell that Aaron had made it down here before her and she felt a pang of panic as she realized she was to fend for herself.
“You sure she’s fooled?” a woman said, though from what Cindy could tell it didn’t sound like Trish.
“I told you, I gave her the video just like planned. And I told her all that BS you had me memorize. I did my end perfectly,” Aaron said, annoyed.
“Well that’s a change,” the woman responded.
“Stop,” a man’s voice said. “She’s here.”
The light turned dramatically on her and she squinted in the sudden change of light. “Welcome to Hell,” the man said. She was bathed in light and the people who were just talking were in the dark.
“Well if I’m going to die,” Cindy said, “I might as well get some answers before I do. Some closure if you will.” She could hear safeties being clicked off and her skin started to tingle in panicked anticipation.
The man laughed. “But if you get away, all my secrets get out.”
Cindy stared down the light. “I won’t get away. You have the obvious upper hand.”
The man laughed again. “Fair enough.” She heard him stand up in a creak of metal joints. The light on her dimmed and lights around her faded on. The room was a large cavernous business office with a chair bolted to the floor right at the bottom of the stairs. The only cover she noted were the pillars holding the terminal up. Four doors lined the sides of the room, but it was obvious they were locked and the deadbolts and chains would be a pain to get through if she was under fire. The stairs came in at the lower right corner of the square room right next to the wall. Aaron was leaning against it, his arms folded across his chest. The second woman who was talking was dressed in a skin tight black uniform and had an automatic rifle in her hand farthest from Cindy; the hand closest was robotic and the sleeve of her uniform was ripped off to show the entire mechanical arm proudly. The head of this odd group was not a man as she had supposed, but she noted without surprised that he was not in the best condition either way. He had been stripped of synthetic flesh and was a 700 model. The blue chrome glimmered in the light and Cindy sat down on the steps.
“Well, you don’t seem surprised.”
“The only thing I find surprising is the curious absence of the girl who led me down here.”
“I was hoping for a little more discomfort than that.”
Cindy smiled. “I’m sorry. I work with people who are crazy. I’m a psychologist.”
“Oh, so that’s what you do,” Aaron said shifting so he was standing up straight, his arms still across his chest.
“Shut up, Aaron,” the mechanical man said. “She’s looking for answers and we’re going to give them to her. I’ll start by telling you a little bit about my crew. You’ve already met Aaron, who is just a human orphan we found on Alpha Centauri VI. He was found abandoned and dying in the middle of the base under the main terminal. To my left, is Margarita. She is also is human, but in a tragic police accident lost the left half of her upper body and is half 600 robot. The little doll you met coming her is Patricia. And she is a figment of your imagination. She’s a sprite, I believe. A hologram. You see what you want to see in her and when you don’t want to see her, she’s gone. The girl in the video is Sandra, who had a tragic accident and couldn’t be with us tonight. I’m Maxwell 700 and the last of the 700s to date.”
Cindy nodded. “Fascinating. So where do I come in. What’s your mission?”
“You already know my mission. Well, I suppose I should tell you how I lost my skin. It was a riot on Betelgeuse III between robots and humans. The whole base is known for their bigotry against robots. Some fight got started because a robot didn’t get down on its knees or it asked for directions of a human, something stupid to that effect. I got caught in the cross fire and ended up being burned with the other robots who didn’t make it. But I didn’t break down; I was a 700 and they didn’t expect there to be a 700. I fled to Betelgeuse VII since I couldn’t leave the bases without proper identification and built a tunnel under various places in the terminal down to the forgotten basements. I knew there had to be a basement, since the building was standing and in some places go quite high off the ground. I set up the supplementary mafia as a sort of bridge between bigoted people and what society thought of them. For obvious reasons, I couldn’t take this mission any farther than where it is now; the government would be after me for even suggesting such drastic measures for equality. And that’s where you come in. I needed someone to reach the people and tell them that equality was a good idea. There are parts of the human brain that I don’t understand and I believe it’s important to take a nonviolent approach to it if we are going to come out of hiding and make it work. I’m not succeeding in my work and I think it would be vastly more appropriate to be nonviolent than a hypocrite.”
“Ok. Why the guns and show? You could have just asked me.”
“No, I couldn’t. I told you, if I let you go, my secret gets out.”
“And if I didn’t come today? I might have let someone else know about the supplementary mafia before you were ready.”
“And why would you? It didn’t seem to have any significance then.”
Cindy paused, stuck in logic. “This just seems wrong,” she said honestly. “Hypnotize me if you want or do something to convince yourself that I won’t tell, but I can’t do it. We’re brainwashing a people for equality and while the cause is something I believe in, I don’t think we can take drastic approaches like this. It’ll be impossible to ‘fix’ everyone anyway. Someone down the line will figure out that they’re being brainwashed and resist. People on this end will die and no one will understand because no one will listen based on the approach to change them. People don’t like change and if they want to change, they should do it on their own. Besides, that’s the only permanent way to guarantee the results you want.”
The robot shook his head. “I can’t let you go.”
“Then don’t let me go,” Cindy said defiantly, standing up. “But just reassure me that you see my point. I fully support you and if I can leave, I will take a more active role in helping out robots in government certified and appropriate organizations. You just can’t do it this way. Look at history and see, that brainwashing has never worked before.”
Margarita walked over to the stairs and started walking up. “She’s got a point,” she said turning around after reaching a few steps behind Cindy’s step. “But this isn’t going according to plan.”
The 700 laughed. “You think?” he sat down in the chair bolted to the floor and looked Cindy in the eye. A shiver ran up her spine as he continued. “I might as well tell you none of our guns are loaded. And I’m going to have to take you to your word and I need you to do something for me to ensure that you’re not going to spill the beans. Are you up for the challenge.”
Cindy nodded. “Most assuredly.”
The robot accepted her answer and called over a member of the guard. The black chrome 500 walked over without so much as a move of recognition to Cindy and bent down as the 700 whispered in its ear, pointing to her on the steps occasionally with a smile.
“You’re going to wish you didn’t say that,” Margarita whispered behind her.
“What could he possibly do to me with unloaded guns? He’s got no supplies. The doors over there are locked and we’re in an open room, so he’s got nothing hidden away.”
“You have no idea,” she said walking past Cindy to lean against the wall at the bottom of the steps. “And I wish I didn’t either.”
To be continued (and concluded)…
Filed under: Hero Cycle, Mystery, Science Fiction by Bri
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