Glow-tiles on the ceiling shed light over the lab. Sam had designed this place based on the lab at her first job, sixteen years ago, after she had finished her Ph.D. at Yale. She had gone to MIT as a postdoctoral fellow to do research with Linden Polk. He had a knack for setting up work spaces that inspired people. He had been that way as her boss, too, challenging her to do her best, an example she had tried to follow when she had taken a job at the BioII Corporate Labs.
Supposedly she had given all that up when she retreated here to the redwoods six months ago. But she hadn't really. With the income from her patents and the royalties she earned on her development of EI brains, she could have built a palace. Instead she gave herself a state-of-the-art biomech lab where she could develop EIs to her heart's content without having to fight anyone. She had installed a mech-table, too, since her research might require work on formas. A burt-wall curved around the table, named for Andrew Burt, the genius who had designed the prototype of intelligent surfaces. The room gleamed, all silver and chrome, bright, polished, shining, and new.
Turner stood in the middle of the lab, turning in a circle. "This is incredible."
"Thanks." Sam liked people who appreciated her work spaces. Her research was so much a part of herself that if someone took a shine to her lab, she figured they had to be her kind of person. Granted, she was no more objective about her work than most people were about their children, but she felt that way nonetheless.
She indicated the mech-table. "You can lie there." The floor tiles felt smooth under her bare feet, reminding her of the boots she was carrying. While Turner went to the table, she sat down at a console and put on her boots, discreetly watching him. His gait had smoothed out enough that she wouldn't have noticed his stiffness if she hadn't known he had biomech legs.
After he lay down, Sam spoke to the console. "Hello, Madrigal."
A woman's melodic voice came out of the comm. "Good morning, Samantha."
What the blazes? "My name is Sam."
"I've decided you don't mean it."
Sam had been developing this EI since she came here, but it had never pulled this before. "Why, pray tell, wouldn't I mean it?"
"I have been analyzing your personality. You call yourself Sam out of habit, but you like your full name more than you are willing to admit."
Sam didn't know whether to growl or laugh. "I call myself Sam because I like it. I use Samantha in formal situations. If you call me Samantha, you make me feel like I'm about to deliver a paper at a scientific conference. I don't want to feel that way right now."
"I see." Madrigal paused. "I have integrated that data into my impressions of you."
"Good." Sam hoped Madrigal didn't come up with any more brainstorms. The EI hadn't yet mastered the nuances of social interactions. At least it hadn't called her Samantha Abigail.
"What can I do for you today?" Madrigal asked.
Sam glanced at the mech-table. Turner had stretched out on his back and was staring at the ceiling with his hands behind his head. In repose, his face seemed more alabaster than skin. A burt-wall about six feet tall curved around the other side of the table, embedded with mesh-panels and holoscreens.
Sam turned to the console, a response that came from habit rather than necessity. Madrigal could see her from any direction, through monitors in the lab. "I'm going to examine the man on the table."
"I have a fix on him," Madrigal said. Holos of Turner's body formed in front of the burt-wall, floating in the air between the table and wall. They showed his muscles, organs, skeleton, circulatory system, and more. Even with just the rudimentary scan that produced those holos, Sam could tell a great deal. His skeleton wasn't bone. Some of his organs were in the wrong place. Instead of a brain, he had neural filaments throughout his body. He was an android. A forma. Had she not heard his story, it would never have occurred to her to think otherwise.
Turner stared at the images, his gaze bleak.
Sam went to the table and dragged her finger along its edge. A rail rose up under her hand on both sides.
"I won't panic," he said.
"I know." It impressed her that he understood so fast. The rails would keep him from rolling off if he began to thrash. "I just want to make sure you're safe." The holos disoriented her. He seemed human to her, but those scans labeled him as a forma. She went to the wall and studied the data on its screens. Then she pulled a robot arm out from its surface and unfolded it over Turner.
He watched her, tense and silent.
Most of the exams could be done externally, but Sam had to pierce his skin for blood tests. His circulatory system was synthetic, as was his "blood." It carried nanomeds, tiny molecular laboratories designed to repair and maintain his internal components. His skin was a marvel unlike anything she had seen before, a type of synthetic plastic so finely made that it was indistinguishable by touch from the real thing. She didn't recognize its structure, but when she had more time she intended to examine it on a molecular level. She analyzed results of his exams using the burt-wall to reduce the data. The entire time, Turner watched with preternatural stillness. She made no attempt to hide the data from him. She suspected he already knew what she would find.
Finally she turned to him, her earlier intensity subdued. He sat up then, pushing down the rail and swinging his legs over the side of the table.
"It's true," Sam said. "You are more biomech than human. Your brain is an EI matrix of mesh filaments."
"I'm a man." His grip on the table tightened until his knuckles turned white. "Not a forma."
Sam pulled her fingers through her curls, lifting the mane off her shoulders. "Charon imaged your brain and reproduced its map in a sixth-generation neural network."
Turner folded his arms and rubbed his hands up and down his arms, though the lab wasn't cold. "When he activated the matrix, I 'regained consciousness.' I couldn't believe how great I felt. All my aches and pains were gone." He lowered his arms. "Then I tried to move. I couldn't."
Paralysis? She could guess what had probably happened. "Your EI brain couldn't coordinate the muscle movements of your body."
"Apparently. Charon didn't recover everything in the imaging process." He fisted his hand, then opened it, watching the movements. "I never realized before how much I took for granted my ability to communicate with my body."
"But you relearned how to move."
"Reasonably well." His gaze never wavered. "Are you convinced now?"
"Your brain is definitely an EI." She rubbed the back of her neck, where the muscles felt like steel bands now. "Your body is rebuilt, but you have human components. Charon couldn't have changed their DNA on a fundamental level and still have you be Turner Pascal. A full analysis should reveal your true identity."
Turner slid off the table and stood next to her. "He will just claim he used the genetic blueprint of a dead man to design an android. How can I prove otherwise?"
"Your teeth."
"Synthetic."
Sam looked over the data on the burt-wall. His teeth were beautiful, perfect, too perfect, but they seemed human, not a construct. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"This Charon is good." It was the understatement of the century. Whoever had done this was a genius. "So how come I've never heard of him?"
"He hides."
"No one can hide that well."
"He can."
"Why hide?"
"Why do you think? He's broken so many laws, I can't even count them. He thrives on it."
Sam rubbed her chin. "He has to have money to do work like this. Resources. Who backs him?"
"I don't know." Turner passed his hand through a holo of his skeleton. "But he's loaded."
"If he's this good and this rich, I ought to have heard rumors, urban legends, something."
"I wish I knew more. But I barely understand it myself." He spoke awkwardly. "Before all this happened, I was just a hotel bellboy. You could have written my knowledge about biomech on the edge of a card."
Sam wondered if he had any idea how compelling he was as a person. She couldn't help but smile. "I doubt you were ever 'just' anything."
That seemed to nonplus him. "Thank you."
"Do you know why Charon picked you?"
"Access, partly. He could get into the morgue that night." His hand clenched on the mech-table. "He also says I was a good candidate: young, strong, healthy."
Sam had no argument about his being in good shape. But if the rest of his story proved as valid as what she had verified, that meant legally this man was dead. Except he wasn't. She defined the end of life as the death of the brain. If Charon had done what Turner claimed, he had revived a man after brain death. A chill went through her. How did you define death, then? Was an EI copy of a brain equivalent to that brain?
"This is going to make a quagmire out of the bioethics debates." Sam paced along the table, away from Turner, talking to herself. "If this is true, we have something big here. We all knew this would happen someday, with the progress we've made in augmenting humans. Where do you draw the line? When does a machine become human and a human become a machine?" She swung around to Turner. "You may be right to worry about the police. They don't have equipment this sophisticated. Their scans will show you as an android." Given the legal ambiguities regarding formas, they would probably treat him as stolen property. "The serial number encoded in your matrix would let them trace you to Charon. They might arrest me for theft."
He paled. "My brain has a serial number?"
She gave him a look of apology. "Yes, I'm afraid so. A corporation constructed the scaffolding Charon used to design your matrix. They put in a serial number just like they do in their software."
"I'm not a thing."
"If you were made as you describe," Sam said, "I would consider you a human being with the rights and protections of any other man."
"If?"
Sam spread her hands out from her body, palms up. "My tests support your story, but they also would if you were a forma with an unprecedented amount of human components in your body."
"What difference would it make?" His face flushed. "If an android became as self-aware as I am, as convinced of his right to self-determination, why would he have fewer rights than a human being?"
"Our best minds have been asking that question for decades now." Sam exhaled. "We still don't have an answer."
"Your best." He leaned against the table. "Ours are better."
"Ours?"
He tapped his temple. "I've an EI brain. It's smarter than my old one."
Sam couldn't imagine what it would be like to change from human to EI, but it didn't surprise her that he felt smarter. "I wouldn't say that to anyone you want to think of you as human."
He reddened. "No, I guess not." After a hesitation, he asked, "Will you help me?"
"Yes, I'll help." His situation compelled her. Even if he wasn't telling the truth, she couldn't walk away from this. He was right, it raised questions that had to be answered. "I want to contact some of my colleagues. And a lawyer. We need to go high up, get people involved who can ensure your safety."
His posture went from relaxed to frozen in a heartbeat. "Charon has spies everywhere! If you bring in other people, they will lead him to me."
Spies? It occurred to her that she didn't know the state of his EI development. His new matrix had to evolve a viable code. The longest-surviving EIs had been sentient for only a few years, and they were running in machines. So far no EI brain had been stable for longer than a year or two without redevelopment; those left to evolve on their own became more erratic until their personalities disintegrated. She knew of one self-aware android that had remained stable—Ander, created by Megan Flannery and Raj Sundaram. But Ander worked constantly with the scientists; his personality otherwise might not have survived intact. Turner's EI could have a better chance, given its origins—a human mind—but no precedent existed. For all she knew, it might fall apart faster.
Sam tried a question that usually tripped up new EIs but that humans tended to like. "What is it that you want me to do?"
"Hide me from his spies."
At least he answered right away. Nascent EIs often faltered or froze when asked an open-ended question about personal preferences. But his comment about spies didn't reassure her. "You think people are watching you?"
"I'm not being paranoid." He folded his arms. "You don't know. Charon is crazy insane and insanely brilliant. His influence is everywhere. Look at me. If someone could build me, think what else he could do."
He had a point. "So why hasn't he embedded tracking devices in you?"
"He did. I disabled them."
"If he's as good as you say, he ought to have made them tamper proof."
"He tried. I paid attention." He shuddered. "You do when someone turns you into a slave. And I'm smarter now."
"I can understand. But I don't think I can hide you. The police will find out you're here. I need help—" She held up her hand as he started to protest. "I'll go to people who will appreciate your situation, people who won't want you mistreated."
He stood like a statue. "Such as?"
"Air Force."
"No!"
She wanted to say No! too, for personal reasons, but they weren't good ones here. "I know people there I trust."
"Don't. Please." The blood drained from his face. "They will make me into an experiment like Charon did."
Exasperated, she said, "You've been watching too many bad holo-movies." She thought of Thomas Wharington, her father's longtime friend, now a three-star general. "The real military is far more staid than all those melodramatic caricatures."
"Please don't."
"Charon will track you down here."
"I covered my trail."
"From this person with spies everywhere?"
"I know about a lot of them."
"Good. You can tell me."
"All right."
That startled her. She had expected him to balk at revealing information, perhaps because subconsciously she still found parts of his story hard to believe. "How long have you been gone from him?"
"The three days I was unconscious, plus a few hours."
"So he's been looking for you for three days."
"Probably." He shifted his weight. "I left a trail to make it look like I intended to hitchhike to Canada."
Sam doubted that would fool an expert for long. "How do you want me to help you?"
"He took everything. My fingerprints, retinal scans, everything. Even my brain waves are different. Change them back."
Sam considered the possibilities. "You already have Turner's DNA. Fixing your retinal scans or fingerprints is possible. You don't want me tampering with your EI matrix, though." She crossed her arms. "For all I know, you're a criminal who wants me to give him the ultimate disguise."
"I'm not." He looked far more like a frightened kid than any criminal. "I swear it."
"Okay. If you want my help, you have to trust me, too."
At first he stood rubbing his arms as if he were cold. Finally he spoke with reluctance. "All right. What do you want me to do?"
"I'm going to make some calls. You can relax, shower, and change if you would like." Sam checked the clock on the console. Good grief. It was after nine p.m. She hadn't realized so many hours had passed. No wonder she felt hungry. She glanced at him. "Do you eat?"
He smiled, bringing out a dimple in his cheek. "I do get hungry. I can taste and smell the food. It won't really replenish my body, but it does provide fuel."
"Amazing," she said, though she wasn't sure if it was his eating habits or that heart-breaker of a smile that left her flushed. He was a mesmerizing puzzle. The scientist in her wanted to study him and the woman wanted to help him.
"Come on," she said. "Let's go rustle up some food."
Sam sprawled in the chair before the console in her bedroom, taking a bite of her hot dog while she waited for a response on the vertical screen. At the moment, it showed nothing but blue.
"How long will it take?" Turner asked, in a chair near hers. They were both far less bedraggled. She had washed his clothes while he showered and changed her own, putting on fresh jeans and a white top embroidered with red flowers.
"It shouldn't be long," she said. "If Giles is there."
He shifted in his chair. "Why should I trust this Giles?"
"Because I do."
"I should ask why I should trust you." He reddened. "But since I sought you out, that's not a fair question."
"I suppose." He sounded so human. His expressions, speech, inflections, mannerisms—it all made her think of him as a man. No forma she had ever worked with had such a sophisticated brain. Yet he was an EI, a damn good one, but still a constructed intelligence. The contradictions in her own reactions to him confused her.
Sam leaned forward with her elbows on the console, the hot dog in one hand. She tapped the activate panel on a smaller screen.
"Good evening," Madrigal said.
"Hey, Mad." Sam glanced at Turner. "You okay with my doing a search on your name?"
"Go ahead. I gave you my word."
"Searching," Madrigal said. "I have the results."
It gratified Sam that Madrigal worked so fast. She had spent the last six months optimizing the EI's response time. "Show them in order of date."
"The most recent is his obituary," Madrigal said.
Turner spoke unevenly. "I'm not sure about this."
"Would you rather I didn't open it?" Sam asked. The idea shook her up, too.
After a pause, he said, "No. Go ahead." He made a wan effort to look cheerful. "After all, how many people get to read their own obituary?"
"If it gets to be too much, let me know."
"Okay."
Sam spoke into the comm. "Go ahead, Madrigal."
The small screen cleared to reveal a news article. "Would you like me to read it?" Madrigal asked.
"No, don't," Sam said. Hearing it out loud would probably be even harder for Turner.
Sam scanned it quickly. The driver of a truck had gone off the traffic control grid and tried to make an illegal turn. His truck skidded on the icy road and rammed Turner's hover car. The truck driver and his passenger had both survived; Turner was the only casualty. He had been twenty-seven, a resident of Portland, Oregon, and a bellboy in a Hilton hotel.
She looked up at him. "I'm sorry."
His face had gone white. "Please take it off. I know I gave you my word. But I—I can't . . ."
"I understand." To the comm, she said, "Madrigal, find something more cheerful."
"I've a holo of Mr. Pascal in a hotel advertisement."
Turner gave a self-conscious laugh. "They liked to put me in their ads. They said it attracted female guests."
"Well, hey." Sam grinned at him. "Let's see, Mad."
The screen washed into a new image, a glossy holo of a hotel lobby with a fountain arching in the background, an elegant registration area, and lushly green plants. The Hilton logo took up the top left corner. In the foreground, Turner stood smiling, his blond hair curling artfully on his forehead, his blue eyes enhanced to a more vivid hue than they appeared in real life. His smile was a brilliant flash of white in his handsome face.
"Oh, my." Sam felt warm. "It's a good picture."
"That's what I want to remember," he said.
The console suddenly beeped, and the large screen rippled into a white background with the logo of her phone carrier, a lightning bolt through a globe of the world.
"What's that?" Turner asked.
"Giles, I think." Sam turned to him. "Probably best you wait out of sight."
"Yes." Turner went to stand across the room. He stood poised by the glass doors to her balcony like a cat ready to jump. She had closed the curtains over the doors so no one would see inside now. Not that anyone was likely to walk by; she had bought this land for its remote location, and the cold weather helped ensure people didn't come wandering. Still, it never hurt to be careful.
As she turned back to her console, the large screen projected an image, the face and upper body of a man with auburn hair, a crooked nose, green eyes, and a large grin.
"Sam!" He beamed at her. "Hallo. Haven't heard from you in ages." His London accent lilted.
"Hey, Giles." Seeing him reassured her. Twenty years ago they had been lovers; a year later they had decided to be friends instead, an arrangement far better suited to their personalities. They had seen each other through university graduations, job searches, and the explosion of new work in their field. She had been a bridesmaid at his wedding to Katie. He had introduced her to Richard Armstead, who later became her husband. Giles had thought Richard could make her happy. He had been right.
And it was Giles who had flown in to be with her six years ago for Richard's funeral. She pushed down the memory, unwilling to face that grief. It was why in the past few years she and Giles had drifted apart. She almost never talked to him anymore. It brought back too many painful memories.
"What's up?" Giles asked.
"I retired," Sam said.
He chuckled. "Katie said she heard that. I'll tell you what I told her. It's ridiculous."
"Maybe. But true." She smiled, imagining his wife's tart response when he didn't believe her. Katie never took any guff from Giles, which seemed one reason he remained smitten with her after fifteen years of marriage.
"Come on, Sam," he said amiably. "Why would you retire?"
"Long story."
"I've plenty of time."
"Actually, I have a philosophical question for you."
He laughed. "You called me across the sea at this inhuman hour of the morning to talk philosophy?"
She flushed. In England, he was eight hours ahead. It was six in the morning there. "Sorry! I forgot the time difference."
"No problem." He settled back in his seat and crossed his hands over his stomach, which had rather increased in girth lately. "So shoot."
"Okay." She leaned forward. "A man dies in an accident. A biomech surgeon images the brain and creates an EI based on it. He rebuilds the guy with biomech to replace his destroyed organs and limbs. When this fellow comes to, he thinks he's human. Surgeon says no, he's a forma. Rebuilt guy says he has same rights he had before. Other guy says you died, now you are an android and I own you. So who is right?"
Giles gave her one of his "I'm unimpressed" looks. "Too easy, Sam. Slavery is illegal. I'm surprised you even considered it a thorny problem."
"I haven't told you the thorn yet."
"No?" He looked intrigued. "And what might that be?"
"It happened."
Giles stopped smiling. "That's not funny, Sam."
"I know. I'm serious."
He sat up straighter. "Bloody hell."
"Yeah."
"Where is he? Why haven't I read about this?"
"He came to me in secret." Sam made a conscious effort not to lean toward Turner or otherwise give away his presence with her body language. "I checked him out. Physically, he is exactly what he claims."
"How do you know he's not an android?"
"Yeah, well, that's the problem, isn't it?"
"Sounds like one for the ethics boards," Giles said.
"It has another wrinkle, I'm afraid."
He squinted at her. "I'm almost afraid to ask."
"He says the person who made him, a man he calls Charon, is some paranoid genius with spies everywhere." She flushed, hearing how nutty that sounded. Giles had never had much patience with dramatics.
His reaction floored her. He didn't scoff. He didn't even crack a smile. Instead he spoke in a very careful voice. "Someone named Charon, you say."
Sam recognized his tone. "You know him."
"It's a mythological reference. Ferryman of the underworld. You of all people should know that."
"Why me of all people?"
"This is Charon, Sam."
"Do you know him?"
He put on an act of shrugging. "Can't say that I do."
Sam scowled at him. "You don't lie well."
For a moment he considered her. Then he said, "This line is secured, right? That's what my incoming said."
"That's right." Before her father had died, three years ago, she had consulted for the Air Force on projects sensitive enough that she had access to their best security.
Giles leaned forward, his elbows on his desk. "Charon is bad news. Stay out of it."
"I've never heard of him."
He stared at her. "Say again?"
"I've never heard of him."
"Eh, well, I can see why you would say that."
That made no sense. "What?"
"You probably know him by a different name."
"Such as?"
"Wildfire."
"Nope."
"Wizard."
She waved her hand. "Half the people on this planet use 'Wizard' as their handle."
"Parked and Gone."
That stopped her. "Parked? He breaks into military satellites. Never been apprehended."
"That," Giles said, "is Charon."
"Parked is a bandwidth bandit. Not a surgeon."
"He's both. Ever hear of Sunrise Alley?"
She sat up straighter. "Hell, yeah."
"How much do you know?"
"Supposedly it's an illegal EI enclave."
He spoke flatly. "That's Charon."
"Charon is a person. Sunrise is an organization."
"Could be."
"You don't know if he's a person or an organization, do you?" She liked this less and less. "If Charon is Sunrise Alley, that could make him the biggest black market mech-king alive. So why haven't I heard of him?"
"I don't know anyone who has actually met him." He spoke carefully. "You say you have someone there who knows him?"
Sam froze as the implication hit her. Charon was so well hidden that even someone as tuned in to the meshes as Giles didn't know his identity for certain. She might have access to one of the few people who could identify this black market king—in her house.
"Ah, hell," Sam said.
Giles spoke in an urgent voice, a stark contrast to his usual mellow style. "Sam, if this man is what he claims, you're in this too deep to go it alone."
"I'll call my NIA contact." In the past decade, the National Information Agency had taken over investigations associated with the world mesh, absorbing entire bureaus of the NSA. Like the CIA, it was run by a civilian appointee, and had almost equal footing with the CIA in the National Security Council. Although it had ties with the Army and Navy, it primarily coordinated its efforts through the Air Force, with headquarters at Andrews Air Force base and the Pentagon. The sprawling agency had become larger and more shadowy than its precursors.
"Get out of wherever you are," Giles said. "Take this guy to the NIA. Fast."
Sam grimaced. "You realize I moved to this lovely place to relieve my stress."
"Sorry, Sam." With care, he added, "Is he there?"
"Who?" Sam knew he meant Turner, but she didn't want to give anything away. If Giles didn't know how Turner looked or sounded, he couldn't identify him.
Giles didn't push. "Just be careful."
"I will." She drew in a deep breath. "I better go."
"Good luck."
"Thanks."
After she cut the link, she swiveled her chair to face Turner, who was still by the curtains.
"Sunrise Alley." Sam wasn't a happy camper. "You neglected to mention that."
"I'd never heard any of it before." He looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a hover car. "No matter what you call him, he's a monster."
She rubbed her arms. Turner might as well have put a holosign over her head pointing her out to anyone chasing him. But it made no difference. Given how she felt about the ethics of biomech development, she could no more turn her back on this than she could stop her heartbeat. She had retreated here to lick her wounds, but it seemed she couldn't be a hermit even when she tried.
"We need sanctuary," she said. They had to move fast.
His posture was so taut, he looked as if he could snap. "With the military?"
"That's right. Actually, to an agency that works with the Air Force." She pulled her wallet out of her pocket and checked to make sure she had her clever-card. "We should travel light. No luggage."
He seemed too stunned to react. He had a quality she had seen in other EIs, a hesitancy, as if his mind was incomplete, unable to absorb input fast enough to respond in a timely manner. His evolving codes were at risk now, not yet developed enough to cope with erratic changes. For a normal EI, how she dealt with it now would be vital in the formation of its personality. But Turner already had a personality; the question was how stable it would remain.
She felt as if she were walking through jagged glass shards. "Turner—how long has it been since you died?"
He spoke self-consciously. "About two weeks."
No wonder he seemed bewildered. He was only two weeks old, even if he did essentially have Turner Pascal's brain. She wanted to offer comfort, but she didn't know what to say to someone who suddenly found himself alive as a forma rather than a man.
"We'll drive to San Francisco," she said.
"You are sure it's safe?"
"No guarantees exist. But this is my best bet." She put confidence into her voice. "We'll fly out of here."
He smiled tentatively. "That would be good."
"You bet."
Sam just hoped they didn't crash and burn.