Time Bandits

By Dean C. Moore

It's the early days in an Age of Abundance, just decades into the future. Consciousness continues to co-evolve with the self-empowerment technologies that give humans almost supernatural powers.

 

Still, some would use these gifts to give free rein to their evil. One such psychopath and his cybernetic creation, a nine-year old girl, are out to save humanity from itself. Clyde Barker is convinced that self-empowerment and self-directed evolution are affronts to God. One might think that even a genius in fashioning human upgrades and a cybernetic little girl with a four-digit IQ would be easily neutralized in an Age of Abundance.

 

One would be wrong.

 

You see, his little girl has a rather unique skill. One might say a special power. With her help, Clyde can pop in and out of timelines at will, steering them in the direction he wants without anyone being any the wiser.

 

Of course, nothing comes easy, not even to a clever, highly-manipulative psychopath.

 

Kendra Harding is the detective heading up the hunt for Clyde Barker. Her on-again, off-again lover and partner in crime, Torin Zealton, is both the coroner and a highly-prized psychic. Getting into her mind uninvited as a matter of habit has all but destroyed their relationship. But getting into Clyde's mind might just save the world.

 

The four timelines explored, in which Kendra and Torin chase down Clyde Barker and his cybernetic creation, give us four different takes on a near-future Age of Abundance, each more glorious and fantastic than the last.

 

Seeing the romance between the wisecracking protagonist paramours, replete with its ups and downs, evolve across four different timelines, moreover, lends the love they share an epic, eternal quality; one that might survive Clyde Barker, even if nothing else does.

NOTE: CONCEIVED IN THE SPIRIT OF IAIN M. BANKS' CULTURE SERIES, THE NOVELS IN THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE SERIES, LIKEWISE, ARE STAND-ALONE BOOKS THAT CAN BE READ IN ANY ORDER. THEY FEATURE DIFFERENT CASTS OF CHARACTERS. THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE IN WHICH THE STORIES ARE SET SPANS FROM THE NEAR FUTURE TO THE FAR FUTURE. IN THE EVENT ANY OF THE AGE OF ABUNDANCE NOVELS ARE SERIALIZED, THEN THE SAME CAST WOULD PREVAIL. I.E. TIME BANDITS 2.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean C. Moore
• Release date: Mar 9, 2016
• ISBN: 9798215213254

Book preview

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

TIME BANDITS

First edition. March 9, 2016.

Copyright © 2016 Dean C. Moore.

ISBN: 979-8215213254

Written by Dean C. Moore.

Also by Dean C. Moore

Biohackers

Cybernetic Agents

Phantom Menace

Singularity News

Blood Brothers

Escape to Creeporia

Elektra

Printed People

Printed People - Part 1

Printed People - Part 2

Printed People - Part 3

Frankenstein

Reborn

Reviled

Reawakened

Futurescape

Terraforming Earth - Phase 1: The Plagues Era

Terraforming Earth - Phase 2: Humanoids in Sealed Habitats

Terraforming Earth - Phase 3: Out of the Darkness

Renaissance 2.0

The Entire Series

Sentience

Sentience

Space Cowboys

The Star Gate

Moving Earth

Spy, Inc.

Born F.R.E.E.

The Futurist

Unkillable

The Magnificent Seven

Endgame - Episode 1 - Inciting Incident

Endgame - Episode 2 - The Quickening

The Mind of God

The Mind of God

Episode 2

The Warlock's Friend

The Crystal Spears

Standalone

Escape From the Future

Love on the Run

Time Bandits

Sentient Serpents

The God Gene

Time Weavers

Android Assassins

Mind Bender

Nano Man 2

Dueling Timelines

Nano Man

TIME BANDITS

Impressionable

An AGE OF ABUNDANCE novel

By

Dean C. Moore

THE PRAXIS TIMELINE

ONE

Squeeze it out, honey.  You can do it.

Of course I can do it.  I just don’t see the point.

It’s a test, my little darling.

You mean like the time you switched out the light bulbs to see if you could save on electricity without harming the plants?

Exactly.

With a big dramatic sigh that Clyde was getting more than a little used to, Notchka lifted the barbell off the stand and did a perfect bench press, only, she did it too slowly.  She had no sense of the seven hundred and fifty pounds she was lifting.  Her cute nine-year-old face and body showed no sign of bearing any weight at all.  Her smile could be conveying delight, but it was a bit ambiguous.  Finally, she set the load back down on the stand.  You tricked me, she said, bolting upright, her long blond hair catching where the bar contacted the grip.  She yanked on the hair to set herself free, spinning the stainless steel rod, not damaging so much as a strand on her head.  My safety systems screamed, ‘Stop!  You risk alerting others to the true nature of your status!’

That’s why we have the gym to ourselves, Princess.  I paid the man a lot of money to hang out the ‘closed for renovation’ sign and to make himself scarce.

A middle aged man asking to be alone with a nine-year-old child?  He should have known to call child welfare.

Clyde smiled warily.  I see different parts of you are aging at different speeds.  We’re going to have to work on that.

Whatever.  Notchka pursed her lips, conveying her sour attitude, and distracted herself by spinning one of the forty-five pound disks on the barbell with her index finger.

Now, I need you to do just one more rep, honey.

I will not!  You don’t have to listen to that voice in your head.  It’s freaky.

When you see what you can do next, you’ll forgive me.

Better be happy birthday special, that’s all I can say.  She laid back down on the bench, and put her arms back on the bar.

Nope.  No arms this time.

You’re crazy.  Do I need to run my civil engineering programs to alert you to just how daft you’re being?  You cannot support a structure without…

Ah, but you can.  You’ll see.

Big dramatic sigh.  Shake of head.  Roll of eyes and farting of the lips.  The full trifecta.  She scrutinized the bar.  And just how am I supposed to move it without touching it?  She stared at the bar vacantly.  Oh, I see.

Clyde watched the barbell levitate off the stand and float around the room.  Now what? she asked.  This is getting boring.

Now we go out and kill some people.

Why would we want to do that?

You remember when I said that the whole world is out of whack, and we have to do our part to set it right?  Well, that’s just us doing our part.

Sometimes I wonder if you’re all there.

The fitness instructor who he’d paid to make himself scarce barged into the room.  Sorry, it’s just that…  He got an eyeful of the floating barbell and never finished his sentence.

Big sigh.  Roll of eyes.  A shake of the head.  Only this time, it was Clyde.  Why can’t people just do what you tell them?

Because then they wouldn’t have free will, ninny.  You taught me that when I was like three.  Are you going senile ahead of schedule?  If you like, I can swap out your brain with the one you made for me.

No, precious.  I was just being rhetorical.  Now if you would please bash the kind man’s head in with the barbell, we can get going.

Why?

Why must you always ask why?

The fitness instructor, wet from peeing himself, regained enough composure to make a dash for the door.  Maybe it was pure fight or flight response, no higher brain activity implied.  The door shut ahead of him, courtesy of Notchka’s telepresence.  Please stay where you are until I can decide whether I’ve won this argument or not, Notchka said.  Her voiced was laced with emotions, just none of the appropriate ones.

Darling, we can’t have him telling people what you can do before you’ve had a chance to fulfill your mission.

And what mission is that?  My brain is filled with lists and lists of them.

The overriding one to which all the others are subordinated, honey.  The save-the-world-from-itself mission.

Oh.  That does sound important.  Without any further ado she exerted her psychic will on the barbell and bashed the poor lad’s brains in and continued battering the body until it was largely paste against the floor mats.  Clyde could barely recall the twenty-something’s wiry build that communicated steely hardness even beneath the loose fitting sweat pants and top.  The blue black hair was straight, right?  Or was it curly?  No straight, definitely straight.  And the hazel eyes with the orange and yellow highlights rimming the irises in the center of all that green that lit a fire at the sight of them.  The sweat that prickled on his skin the second he got an eyeful; it was as if lifting the weight of awareness of the levitating barbell was just too much for him, even in the fifty-degree room.  The wall-to-wall mirrors caught his senseless panic from every angle like a determined film director determined to milk the scene.

Clyde checked his own comportment in the mirror, straightening his tie and his back.  Sure, his hair was silvery and scraggly and just past the shoulder, suggesting he hadn’t attended to his personal grooming in weeks.  To say nothing of the stubble.  He resembled a homeless man in a thrift store suit.  But he still looked a damn sight better than Pasty Boy.  As to Notchka, she reminded Clyde of an oversized doll, still dressing as if she were five years old in a frilly pale yellow dress and stockings and panties in one, and shiny black shoes.  Giving her a distinct, age appropriate identity was proving difficult with, among other things, the many totally age inappropriate tasks he’d set for her.  She required rationalizations that no child her age would require; that had been true at every stage.  Still, some of her emotional responses were often very age appropriate, others were more than a little regressed.  He wasn’t sure which was the bigger problem.  Precocious Notchka, or relapsed Notchka.

He took another glance at the pancaked man looking as if he’d gotten caught under a steamroller used for laying asphalt.  He’d had the fairest white skin; that much Clyde remembered clearly.  Only now, his blood was so well blended with the dermal tissue, he appeared as if he might have been Native American, what with the rosy tinge.  Just moments ago, Clyde recalled he was also quite handsome.  Now, his beauty held a distinctly more abstract quality.  That was good thinking, obscuring his identity.  That’ll buy us some time.  They’ll also wrongly assume it was a crime of passion, being as it’s so over the top.

What do you want me to do with the security cameras?

Clyde noticed them all throughout the room for the first time, dotting the ceiling in nice neat rows, with those red domes over them, like the ones they used at Home Depot.  Ah, you moron!  He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.  You see why I need you by my side, Precious?

You might need more than me at the rate your mind is deteriorating.

Very funny.  Now, fry the circuitry in the cameras, erase the digital recordings, and let’s get going, he said.  Then, giving the matter a second thought, Only, don’t do it right away..  I want to see if you can monitor this space from a distance, even with all the distractions I throw your way.  Psychically erase the recordings only when the police go to look at the tape for the first time.

You expect a lot of me.

You don’t know the half of it.

And what if I can’t do it?

I suppose we’ll have to kill everyone who ever sees the tape or comes into contact with the information.

Oh.  I see now why you’re not particularly concerned either way.  Getting away with mass murder is a rather simple logistical problem, providing I remain connected to the grid and to the pertinent live camera feeds.  Now I guess I understand the point of the psychic exercise.  Maybe you’re not a total idiot, Clyde.

Now, what did I tell you about using that four-digit IQ against me?

Something about George Forman never climbing into a ring with a lightweight.  It lacks dignity.

That’s right.  And if there’s one thing we’re all about?

It’s safeguarding human dignity, they said together.

TWO

Kendra entered the gym workout area and eyed the murder scene unemotionally.  They were alone, save for the dead body, and the gym apparatuses standing indifferently about like cool sentinels who couldn’t be bothered to intercede to save the man’s life.  The analogy wasn’t that farfetched, since each piece of exercise equipment was a shapeshifting droid meant to morph within the parameters of its assigned task to personalize the workout of the human inhabiting it.  Kendra guessed, after today, their programming might be upgraded to intercede on brawls breaking out in the gymnasium.  Before the door could close behind her on its hydraulic arm, she said, What’s the verdict?

You mean other than the fact that we’re dealing with a mad man?

Torin, kneeling over the body, looked up from the deceased and into Kendra’s eyes with a paradoxical grin, and those fathomless baby blues of his.  The blue-black curly locks and his chiseled face always made her think of Michelangelo’s David.  Somehow, he was an improvement, even when unclothed.  Especially when unclothed.  Michelangelo would have to have been every bit the choreographer of lovemaking that he was the sculptor and painter for it to be otherwise.  God, you’re so transparent, he said.

What?

You realize how inappropriate it is to be fantasizing about humping me over the dead body?  Especially one in this state.

I had the moral high ground for a second there, what with not being able to derive the least emotional response to the grizzly nature of the crime.  Better than you looking positively excited by it.  But you’re right; fantasizing about you, rolling amid the gore and guts without a care in the world, that’s a new low, even for me.

You think we can coach each other back to some basic humanity?

If we can’t, then there’s no sound logic to those AA meetings either.  Who else would put up with us, and who else is nearly as qualified to call us on our shit?

Fine then.  Let me lead by example.  Torin’s face took on a more sober countenance on a dime.  A professional actor couldn’t have morphed any faster.  He stood up and regarded the body from the new perspective.  He was dressed better for a Vogue photo shoot or a night at the opera.  It was always that way with him.  She imagined with all the stares he got, giving people an excuse when he caught them staring at him of admiring his exquisite attire was just another piece of kindness in addition to the free eye candy.  I think what we’re looking at is meant to appear like a crime of passion but…

But?  They certainly had me fooled.

Maybe if they’d pulled up short of turning the guy into complete jelly on rye toast.  No, this is just a little too perfect, a little too clinical, and a little too…

Anal retentive?  He threw a nasty glance back at her.  Takes one to know one, I guess, she said.  So what, our perp can’t be passionate and obsessive compulsive at the same time?

Torin just shook his head.  Something doesn’t feel right about that conclusion.  Anyway, I don’t think we’re looking for a person, a robot maybe.

Come again?

Take a look at that bar bell, he said, continuing to deliver each sentence in his customary fashion, with far too much energy and enthusiasm and upward inflection at the end.  His eyes so lit she often had to look away for fear of being blinded by the bright soul projecting at her through them from the other side.  Charles Atlas couldn’t lift that thing, far less swing it like a baseball bat—and God knows how many times—to procure this effect.  No, this is one of those robo-docs General Motors has been spitting out.

Oh yeah, you can order them on line, tweaked to your specifications.  My dad owns an auto repair shop, swears by his.  Pete, he calls it.  The damn thing has a name.  Says he can lift the car off the ground for him if the hydraulic lift ever failed. 

They’re called robo-docs despite not being robotic doctors because they can be programmed to doctor any situation.  His hands gestured, moving along with the rest of him; he was like an antsy teen who couldn’t sit still; honestly, she could think of few teenagers who had this much energy.

She regarded the barbell, smeared with blood and gore, with the latest revelation in mind.  So what we’re really looking for then is a deranged computer programmer who can rewire a robo-doc, set it to kill for him?

Torin was shaking his head again, still fixated on the body and the crime scene.  What now? she asked.

Those things usually move on tracks, like a tank.  You’d think there’d be some evidence of it on the mats.

For a coroner, he could be damn annoying.  More savant than doctor, he was not beyond outclassing her in the detecting department; his mind took in things at a glance it’d take her numerous instant replays on the digicams to detect.  Not necessarily, she said.  The mats are built for wear, and the thing’s roller belt could have been modified to not leave tracks.

I’m not discounting the possibility; it just doesn’t feel right.

You and your intuitions.  That’s why I left you; it’s why everyone leaves you.  Who can handle being married to a psychic in a Big Brother age?  It’s bad enough there are cameras everywhere and NSA agents running supercomputers to decipher the meaning of our every move.  It’s equally mortifying everyone else is inside my head trying to get over on me with the latest hustle and come-on in an age where everyone is selling to everyone else.  But to come home, just when you need to shut the door on all that shit, only to have you get inside my head worse than all of them put together…

I get it, I get it.  Why do you think I didn’t contest the divorce?  You think it’s any easier living inside my head?  Maybe if you’d taken a moment to walk a mile in my shoes.

They glared at each other.  We’re being inappropriate again, she said.  We’re letting our drama upstage his.

Personally, I think he’s beyond caring.  I, on the other hand…

Can’t stop loving.  I think you know it’s love when you can’t turn it off.

He seemed to soften on the remark, perhaps because he could read the emotions on her face, or worse, was looking inside her head without permission, as usual.  Shifting his attention to the roomful of workout toys to buoy his spirits, he said, These things are alive, you know?  In a sense, anyway.  Too bad they’re still too primitive to bear witness.  They only awaken when in use.  Still, might be worth checking out in case someone was using one at the time, one of the perps maybe.

Yeah, I guess, she said, sounding as unenthusiastic, she realized, as he was over-enthusiastic.

Torin stepped into the boxing unit and shadow boxed, with the machine shaping itself around him like a tailored exoskeleton.  This one’s designed for the geriatric crowd, he said giddily, throwing some more punches, ducking, and jiving.  Gets the complete range of motion going even in an arthritic body, all while monitoring internal pain levels, and injecting the necessary hormones to free up the joints and dull the nerve receptors.  Do you respond to verbal prompts, Big Guy?

Yes, sir, the boxing droid said.  If you become too fatigued to talk, I can scan your brainwaves and just read your mind.

Primitive, huh? Kendra said, sour faced.  She didn’t exactly have the same fondness for technology he did.  If he was boys with toys, she was back to basics girl, down to her refusal to wear makeup and even wear a watch any more advanced than one with a sweeping second hand. 

Catching a glance of herself in the mirror didn’t help how she felt.  Her black hair, kept neat and short, exposed her sleek neckline.  The outfit exposed a lot of alabaster skin, all of it smooth and blemish-free enough for her to pass as an android.  In that moment, with him strapped into one of the workout droids, it was as if they were both being taken over by the age in which they lived.

Give me some more resistance, Big Guy.  Though you can keep injecting me with those natural highs.  No complaint there.

Torin, we aren’t at Coney Island.  We’re at a murder scene.  Try to show some respect.

He looked at her aghast that she could pick now to spoil all his fun.  Yeah, I did ask you to help me be more acceptable to the rest of the human race, didn’t I?  Suppose it’s too late to take it back.

Way too late.

He climbed out of the machine begrudgingly. 

You finished collecting your samples?

Yeah, he said.  Though I’m not expecting to learn anything more.  He picked up his samples kit.  Let’s hope your detective’s acumen is good for something beyond dulling your sensibilities.  He didn’t wait for the smart-alecky comeback; he just exited the door without so much as a second look at her. 

Let’s hope, she said to dead air that not even the whoosh created by the hydraulic limb closing the door could enliven.  His hard shell had closed over the soft underbelly rather quickly.  Choosing anger over vulnerability.  Perhaps because of being shut down by her one too many times in quick succession.  She couldn’t blame him.  It was why she chose numbness over being raw nerves.  The window of opportunity between them seldom lasted long before the defenses dropped back into place. 

She glanced at the overhead cameras.  She should have seen them first thing, if it weren’t for Torin pulling focus.  It was why aging superstars seldom chose to be cast alongside pretty boy younger actors if they could avoid it.  Get both of them in a two-shot, and the younger one always pulled focus.  Whatever case you could make for good acting just went out the window.  He’d long since learned to avoid putting her in that situation by standing in her blind spot when she had to interview a witness or potential perp. 

Kendra headed towards the back room in search of the DVRs attached to those cameras, rather looking forward to the show.  Though not with the same childhood excitement Torin brought to all things; she was curious to see if anything could penetrate that shell of numbness that she kept wrapped around her like a warm, protective blanket. 

THREE

Dad?  The shop smelled of oil and gas and dust and a complex mélange of things it was beyond Kendra to identify.  Many of the odors could no doubt be sourced back to the undercarriages of those cars, some of them lifted off the ground.  No matter how big his garages got, they never seemed any less cramped.  As usual, it was a game of hide-and-seek to find him.  He’d robbed her of a childhood, so she supposed this was just his way of giving it to her now.  Dad! she said with rising impatience.

Over here! he shouted in his gravely, pre-cancerous voice.  Assuming that wasn’t full-on cancer he wasn’t telling her about.  Be just like him to check out without so much as a word.  She was doing no better at pinpointing his whereabouts with just echo-location to assist her.  Too many surfaces for the voice to reverberate off of.

You want to send up a flare?

The familiar thunderous smack of a gun discharging had her reaching for her holster.  An orange glow ignited overhead, showering the vicinity in tiny needles of Vegas-night-life light.  He’d fired off a flare that lodged in the ceiling overhead.  I was joking! she said.

No you weren’t.  Got tired of hearing your griping.  You said we never played enough children’s games when you were younger.  Now I get good at hide-and-seek and you still bitch.

It galled her that they could have the same thoughts about anything, including the analogy depicting this bit of foreplay so common between them.  She found him at last.  You’re right.  Better my second childhood than yours.

Ha-ha.  I’ll be entering mine soon enough and then you’ll resent me all the more.  Assuming that’s possible.  He was sitting on a faux red leather upholstered stool with wheels turning a socket wrench in his hand, with the car lifted off the ground just a few feet.  The dirty cream overalls seemed to swallow him up a little more each year.  It wasn’t just weight he was losing, it was bone mass, height; he was the incredible shrinking man.  How many times had she told him, alcohol dissolves the bones? 

I came to ask you about Pete.

Pete?  Well, he doesn’t have much of a social life, but neither do you.  I suppose I’ll understand if you make some time for one another.  He was talking to her like a nagging voice in back of his head, eyes still focused on his work, hands still turning his wrench, playing it better than a musician played his sax.

Very funny.  I need to know if he can be programmed to kill somebody.

He sighed, slackened his hold on the wrench and craned his head towards her.  "I’m not that much of a pain in the ass, am I?"

No, you I’ll kill with my bare hands, when it comes time.  This is about another murder I’m contemplating.

He set down the socket wrench and wiped his hands of grease in the rag, which was greasier, and just made more of a mess of his hands.  His long hair draped over his shoulders.  There was just a little blond streaking the grey now.  He may have grown older but he never grew up.  Still a hippie at heart.  Still smoking enough weed to give her adequate cause to bust him.  Though he’d argue it was medicinal.  He grimaced, ruminating over her insinuations.  You’d have to be awfully smart to reprogram Pete for something like that.

There’s no shortage of smart people, Dad.  Add to the ones born that way, the neuro-enhanced, juiced up on any number of mind-expanding drugs, you should know about that… and then there’s Google, which makes any idiot plenty smart enough.

Still.  It takes teams of people working together to build his brain.  Hard to imagine it would take any less to re-engineer him.  But I suppose anything’s possible.  Pete!  Come over here.

She could hear Pete squeaking a path to them from God knows where in the shop.  How is it he can trace a beeline to you and I can’t?

He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a garage door opener.  My distress beacon.  Though I’m not sure I want that guy working on me when I go into cardiac arrest.  One chest compression and it’ll be like a truck ran over me.

What’s up, doc? Pete said, squeaking into sight.  Pete looked like a cross between a shop vac and Mr. Clean, the bald muscle guy avatar peddling himself as a home cleaning solution since the 1950s or so.  These days, Mr. Clean mostly enacted biowarfare against germs on your behalf with its self-evolving within-limits, more-rabid bacterial strains than anything you had around the house.  Pete looked like he was here to unleash not just bacterial warfare but whatever his dad needed in around-the-shop assistance, up to and including tearing the limbs off a guy and stuffing the pieces inside him and hitting puree.  Come to think of it, her father said he’d switched to biofuels some time back.  Maybe that’s what he meant; everyone he’d offended and taken advantage of over the years who’d found their way back to him for some payback found themselves turned to the greater good instead.  Though of course he’d gone on about biofuels being an eco-conscious decision, the same way that growing and selling pot was eco-conscious by cutting down on the need for commuting to make a living and hence on noxious automotive gaseous emissions. 

All in all, it wasn’t much of a surprise why her perps couldn’t fast-talk their way around her; by the age of nine she’d heard it all; better spin doctoring than most politicians commanded and all in the name of epic self-destructiveness.  Or enticing her to run some con in concert with him toward the ends of paying off his many gambling debts, betting on most anything being his third favorite addiction.  As co-grifter, she’d probably committed more crimes before she could define the word than she could make up for with her arrest record.  All preying on other people’s emotions as much as her own.  No wonder she’d adopted emotional numbness as a defense mechanism.

Your track needs greasing, Pete, he said.

Then I wouldn’t be able to irritate you.

She smiled.  I like him already.  What else do you do to get under his skin?

After a split second delay, Pete confessed, I leak oil on his carpet.

Inspired.  But since when did he start taking you home with him?

Since his body started locking up on him.  Compressed vertebrae.  I told him I could operate.  All he has to do is switch out my modules.  But he’s old fashioned.

Yeah, I know.  He’d rather just get stoned on weed.

I envy him for that.  Me, I don’t get any reprieve, ever.  Makes a person homicidal.  Pete crushed a rusty carburetor in his hands as if to relieve the mounting stress that was just going to make murder inevitable moments from now.  She winced at the thought of a classic piece of hardware like that, however rusted and inoperable, forfeiting its remaining years just so Pete could have a more defined sense of self. 

Then she reminded herself that they had computer printers these days that could fabricate most anything on demand at a fraction of the cost of the original and likely to last ten times as long.  One more reason the bread lines were growing longer, unemployment more rampant, and the only way out to agree to some chip implant or other human upgrade just to stay in the game.  Which explained her disdain for technology and its advocates, in general, most of all, these Singularity Watchers celebrating each breakthrough in human upgrades like it was leading them to the Promised Land instead of to perdition.  Someone owning a piece of her mind with overwrite access, some backdoor coding only the manufacturer had privy to, the one in bed with the government and big money interests whose main concern was to ensure everyone remained subservient to them?  No thank you.  What surprised her was she was in a minority.  People weren’t rioting in the streets.  And her rants made her seem like the crazy one. 

All the same, she couldn’t help smiling despite Pete’s dark innuendo.  She could read bluster on AIs as well as she could on people.  These days her perps could be either one, so just came with the territory.  We think a robo-doc, just like you, killed someone, she said, looking him straight in the front-facing artificial eyes rimming his head.

Impossible.  Don’t let the snarky humor fool you.  I’m running the dry sarcasm algorithms.  It’ll pass the Turing test, providing you just desire a smart ass.  But I really can’t be other than I am.  Same with the auto-repair module.  You’d have to swap it out if you wanted something different, and then it’d just be different programmed behavior.

That could well be the answer, a military module then.

Nope, Pete said swiveling his head back and forth, which just made her dizzy tracking all those eyes.  Robo-docs are too crude for military applications, too cheaply made, a little too off-the-shelf, even with the ever-expanding battery of extensions.  Even the military bots aren’t really used to kill people for fear of escalating things.  They’re used more in a peacekeeping capacity, like police.

I don’t know.  You seem able to do a lot more than you initially suggested.

The sarcasm module is an overlay above and beyond general utility mode.  That includes internet data retrieval.  You really haven’t asked me to do anything outside my programming.

What would someone need to do to make you truly sentient?

Design a better robot.  You’d need self-evolving hardware and software so I could reprogram and rebuild myself.

But you wouldn’t have to be sentient to kill.  Programmed behavior should suffice just fine.

Damn it, Kendra! her dad shouted, startling her, as he threw down the rag in his hand.  This is the way she is, he explained to Pete.  It’s not the truth she wants, just a sliver of proof that her worst fears are justified.  Always it’s worst case scenarios with you, he said, turning to face her again. 

Gee, I wonder where I got that from, Dad?  With you the worst case scenario usually turned out to be the correct one.

He already explained to you… 

"Presumably a robo-doc could be programmed to kill, Pete interjected.  They both turned to him with betrayed expressions on their faces.  I just said a military module wasn’t likely.  So long as you knew all the parameters of the situation going in, murder is just another task to perform efficiently within the given constraints.  We can improvise within limits having to do with our module’s assigned tasks.  You’d have to case the joint first, to put it in the vernacular.  Make sure to control the most important variables come D-day."

Like what? she said.

Don’t know, not at an expert level, anyway.  Don’t have a module for that.  Like I said, we robo-docs are jacks of all trades, masters of none outside our specialty module. 

Why can’t you just access what you need off the internet? Kendra asked.

That kind of access is denied.  The instant we log on, we’re identified, limiting what we can and can’t do.  Any attempts to hack the chip, assuming that’s what you’re going to ask next, leads to instant lobotomy.  I won’t just look like an empty oil drum then that thinks he’s a man, I really will be all hollow on the inside.

She just wasn’t buying it.  Pete just seemed a lot higher functioning to her than he was letting on.  Me thinks you doth protest too much, was that the Shakespeare line?  If you don’t believe me, ask your dad.  He’s been trying to get me to kill him for years.  Pete rolled off on his tracks to return to this work.  The fact that he seemed to read her mind didn’t assuage her fears any.  Then again, his ability to read human moods and expressions would be part of the standard service kit, to make him less difficult to live with and more humanlike in his companionship.  Maybe what really creeped her out was just how human he could seem without being human, while adhering to strictly programmed behavior.  Muddied the divide between humans and robots.  Making it hard to go on feeling superior.  After all, she was no shortage of programmed behavior beyond her own control as well, as any psychologist would be happy to testify to.  And that meant that even before getting a mind chip stuck in her head, she may well be a lot more programmed by Big Brother than she cared to admit.

After feeling herself tensing up secondary to the thoughts flowing through her mind, she softened some as she returned her eyes to her dad.  She got so lost in hating him she sometimes forgot he was starting to have the kinds of problems that would benefit from love and forgiveness more than resentment.  Per Pete’s comment about Dad’s frequent requests to off him.  But she could handle that truth even less right now, namely his well-deserved human right to accept and receive kindness, so she kept her shields of anger and resentment just where they were.

You sure you’re barking up the right tree with this theory of yours? her father asked. 

No, I’m not.  Torin doesn’t buy it either.

Torin, your psychic ex-husband?  What does he know?  If he was that psychic he wouldn’t have married you in the first place.  Hell, I could have told him you’re more trouble than you’re worth.

Love you too, Dad.  She could hear her high heels clicking on the cement as she turned her back on him, shooting him down with the click-click-click coming like machine gun fire. 

Wish that were true, he mumbled behind her.

She steeled her heart, actually gratified that she’d learned to do that at an early age thanks to him.  Otherwise she would be a basket case in her line of work.  Not even Torin had figured that much out.

FOUR

A FEW HOURS EARLIER…

Hi, sweetie!  Look at you, you’re a mess! 

I’m afraid she got a little carried away with the jelly doughnuts.

Shame on you, encouraging such behavior.  She’ll be positively addicted by the time she’s older.

He’s the worst parental figure, the worst, Notchka said.  I’m going to have to trade him in on a new model. 

The meddlesome female bent over to apply her handkerchief to Notchka’s face, as Clyde looked around.  They’d barely made it out of the gym onto the sidewalk, and now this.  At least traffic was light and zooming by.  Not any of them would be able to make much of what they saw, assuming they saw anything at all.  Now, what to do with this intrusive lady?  She’d seen them standing right in front of the gym.

The woman, satisfied with her cleanup of his daughter’s face, tucked her handkerchief back in her purse without paying much attention to what she’d actually wiped off.  Talk about unreliability of eye-witnesses.  It was true; people really did see what they expected to see, and no more.  But now they’d have DNA evidence to go on, the skin-cells she’d managed to slough off of Notchka’s face, if the cops ever crossed paths with Ms. Inconvenient. 

She was dowdy, fiftyish, and showing more skin in that tight dress than she ought to, even without the chilly weather factored in.  It was his guess she made sure to parade up and down this street as often as she could to catch the pumped up johns coming out of the gym, perhaps riding their steroid high enough to hump a telephone post.  Easy pickings.  Probably the only place she’d be shown any interest at all.  If she put half the effort into actually working out, she mightn’t be half bad, broadening her prospects.  Maybe she just couldn’t maintain the illusion she was anything other than she was before all those mirrors.

I’ll get her right home and clean her up, Clyde promised.  Thank you for your kindness.  He pressed his hand against Notchka’s back and hurried the two of them away from her.  Don’t look back, he mumbled to Notchka.  Just tell me, using your psychic abilities, if she’s forgotten about us and is moving on.

Yep, completely.

I’m guessing that means Miss Inconvenient isn’t exactly shopping for age appropriate fare, Clyde thought.  Probably felt she needed the energy and sexual prowess of a younger man, which, scientifically speaking, wasn’t half bad reasoning.  Clyde would be happy to confirm that his penis size and his ability to hold an erection both had declined in recent years.  An affirmation he doubted she was looking for.  She had enough of her own unsettling insecurities to contend with, too much perhaps to entertain anyone else’s.  That was one more check mark in the column for younger men.

Good, he said.  Once she’s a respectable distance away so no one can associate what happens next with us, I need her to combust in flames.

Why?

She’s got your DNA on her handkerchief.  They’ll be able to track us with that.

So what if they do?  You keep saying I’m smarter than anyone alive.

And now you’re deadlier too.  But it doesn’t pay to get too cocky.  I’m guessing, moreover, trouble will find us the way it has today without us having to go looking for it.

I want to get caught.  I want to test my skills against whoever’s gumshoeing me.

I have much better ways to test your abilities.

Promise?

Promise.

Big dramatic sigh.  Fine.  But your manipulation of my young impressionable mind is duly noted and may not be forgiven later.

That’s good, Notchka.  It means you’re learning there are always consequences to actions, some not even you will be able to avoid.  Maybe now you understand better why I don’t want you to get too full of yourself.

You believe whatever we do comes back to us three times over.  That’s magical thinking.  And not very scientific.

I guess time will tell just how scientific it is.  Her remark had cut straight to the heart of his little ongoing experiment.  But there was no need to get into all that right now.   

She squeezed her eyes shut and combusted the woman at a distance.  He hadn’t turned around to check, but the scent of burning flesh was wafting towards him on the brisk breeze.  Not to mention the blessed warmth of the fire against the sphincter-tightening cold.  The yelp of sound that had managed to escape Ms. Inconvenient had been sucked in pretty quickly by the tornado of flame no doubt raging about