David Ring III - Stanley Duncan's Robot

“He should be here any minute.”

The delay annoyed him to no end. This freak show should never have been permitted to carry on. “In ten more minutes, once the abomination goes back up on stage, I’m arresting it. I won’t permit the poison to spread any further.”

“I’ll make sure that whoever is responsible for the delay pays.”

“You be sure you do. This is war. We can’t have insubordination — that’s treason.”

Brad looked away. “What about Duncan?”

“Hiding scared at home,” said Evan, a delightful sensation filling his head. “The janitor’s on his way to clean up that trash.”

As Stanley’s program ran on the computer, he sat at the table and listened to Dan’s press release. Signing away a new signature every few seconds, his heart thumping and mixing in with the buzzing of the drones outside. A news alert played during a commercial in the press release, making allegations that Stanley was wanted for questioning by the police for the murder of Officer Michaels. Stanley nearly lost it. He could see what they were doing — destroying him as a way to destroy Dan and Machines with Dreams. But he was not going to let them do it.

Finally, an alert sounded from his computer. Stanley rushed over and saw the IP address that had spoofed the call and unleashed a suite of security tools scanning for vulnerabilities, finding one instantly in a third-party script. With a few commands, he could root and destroy the harasser’s computer. But first, Stanley wanted to see the face of the man who’d had the audacity to harass him.

The next thing Teddy realized was that they were dragging him back to the holding area, limbs barely responding to his commands. Tortured and driven to insanity, he was going to die here. But he wasn’t ready to let that happen. Not because he wanted to be alive but because he needed to kill Brad.

Looking around the room, he searched for something he could use as a weapon. There were spikes, blades, and hammers everywhere, but finding an object that he could retrofit onto his maimed body was the difficult part. Jamming a blade into his stub seemed like the only option.

Maple was here. Teddy recognized the stupid little pink dress she was wearing. “Maple? Can you hear me?”

No response.

It didn’t look like she had been physically modified, but they may have formatted her programming and put in some murderous software. If he turned her on, she may end up killing him. Better to wait until he found a weapon to defend himself with.

As he continued to inspect the room from where he was lying, he noticed a phone jack along the wall. There was no phone, but he had an idea.

Getting up off the ground was harder than he expected. He was completely enervated from the beating he had received. If they made him fight later, there would be no way he could defend himself. Walking up to an android with bladed hands, Teddy sliced up his right stub, peeling away his artificial flesh until one of his electrical wires was exposed. Taking it into his mouth, he pulled it out and opened the wiring. He could feel the current from it running through his mouth, modulating the strength with the Cerebral Stitch.

This was going to work.

Sticking the wire into the jack, Teddy could feel the energy running through him and knew the phone was live. Creating Morse Code through electric pulses, he sent out an SOS to Dan. If anyone came down now, they would be able to see what he was doing and stop him. But this was his best chance at survival and the only way he had left to get revenge.

Stanley stared into the computer screen as he hit the “Return” button, ready to confront the man who had threatened him in his own home. He imagined a sinister-looking face similar to Evan’s, some horrible man hell-bent on hurting others, with a dagger in his hand, guffawing to horrendous snuff videos.

The live-feed from their webcam popped up — it was a young boy.

“No!” Thrusting his face toward the screen, Stanley couldn’t believe his eyes. This boy was not even a teenager. “Why would you do this to me?”

The boy couldn’t hear him. Nor did he know that his webcam had been compromised.

Stanley got to his feet. Dan had been right. The children needed their guidance. Looking outside, more reporters had arrived. Fear rose in his stomach, but Stanley refused to listen. He should never have let Dan do this alone. He threw on his coat and ordered a Fermi. When it arrived, he walked outside, scurrying through an army of android reporters armed with a barrage of questions and unforgiving lenses.

“— Are you going to the high school?”

“— How would you characterize your relationship with Dan?”

“— Is it true that you are programming androids to kill people?”

Stanley ignored the cacophony, beaming directly toward the Fermi, cursing himself for not leaving earlier.

“Duncan!” Holt bolted out in front of Stanley.

Stanley gasped. “You’re that nasty man who treated my Dan so awfully.”

“I’ve been a man of God all my life — more than fifty years.” Deep, wheezy breaths scraped through Holt’s throat. An unreadable tattoo peeped out of his left shirt cuff. A forest of graying chest hair threatened to escape through the gap in his shirt where a button had been undone.

“Great. Go do it somewhere else.” From a few feet away, Stanley could still smell the stench of alcohol on his breath.

Holt stepped toward him. “I grew up before the Internet was popular, well before the rise of intelligent machine life.”

“I don’t care,” said Stanley, moving toward the Fermi.

Holt stepped in front of him. “But God led me elsewhere,” he continued. “For fifteen years, I hauled freight across the USA. Fifteen great years, that is, until all the truckers were laid off and replaced by the self-driving systems we helped to teach.” His lip snarled, and his friendly look turned to hatred.

“And you think it’s Dan’s fault?” hissed Stanley. Shortly after the creation of the first cyborg, the Pope had given a press conference, calling it an “abomination.” It was his words Holt was echoing today. The Pope’s denigration had led to a revival in the practices of the Ku Klux Klan. Public burnings of androids and cyborgs became widespread. Stanley wondered how many times Holt had put on a white hood.

“The AI systems installed in my eighteen-wheeler collected data as I drove, silently studying and codifying everything, until—” he shook his head “—until they didn’t need me anymore. Threw me out like trash. I had become redundant.”

“Oh, poor you. You act like it’s everyone’s fault but your own. You knew the Great Layoff was coming — everyone knew. Even before it came, you had the BGI and more than enough time and money to prepare.”

“We’re talking about my life — not money. Can you fathom what it’s like knowing that you are training your own replacement?” He shook his head, his nostrils swelling to the size of a lug nut. “For years I acquiesced, knowing that I was tying my own noose. It was horrible, but there was nothing I could do about it. I needed money — the BGI took way too long to get passed — and nobody else was hiring for decent pay. I’m a man of God. There was no way I was going to take up looting, like so many sinners had done.”

“That’s really great of you and all, but I need to go. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

Holt raised his palm up toward Stanley. “Just answer me this — why did you do it? Why write a program that would destroy my life and the lives of so many others? You had to know it was going to happen, and yet you chose the machines over your own kind.”