Perion Synthetics (8 page)

“Anything blowing your skirt up?” asked
Sava.

“That one’s missing its symbol,” said Cam,
pointing to the palette.

On the screen, a three dimensional model of
a woman rotated slowly. The label underneath contained her vitals: five feet
three inches tall, one hundred and fifteen pounds. She had eyes the same color
as her hair, a deep russet brown that sparkled at the edges of her irises. Cam
found himself lost in the shape of her eyebrows, which rose and fell as they
extended away from the center of her face, tapering to a fine point. The detail
was far superior to anything else in the catalogue.

“Weird,” said Sava, swiping the palette to
bring up the model’s technical data. “I guess they forgot to log her tag when
they put her in the system.”

“Can I meet her?”

Sava grinned. “You’re a salesman’s dream,
aren’t you? Her file says she’s imprinted for clerical work. Not exactly
exciting stuff.”

“I’ll make it exciting,” said Cam, pulling
out his phone. He opened the camera app. “For the story.”

“Fine, I’ll bring her in. We can check her
tag in person.”

Sava tapped the button marked
Select
in the bottom right corner of the screen. The palette dimmed and presented a
message assuring them their selection would be with them shortly.

Cam took a seat on the couch. The rough base
and oddly curved backing made finding a comfortable position nearly impossible.
From the door, Sava gave him a quizzical look.

“It’s the couch,” he explained. “I’m not
nervous.”

“Sure,” said Sava, trying to hide her
amusement. She wandered into the hallway for a moment. “Ah,” she said, stepping
back into the room. “Mr. Gray, meet your new domestic partner.”

Cam stood but was unable to take a step
forward.

Someone was playing a joke on him. There was
no way the woman standing in the doorway could have been a synthetic. They had
hired the most attractive woman in the city just to see if Cam would fall for
it.

So that was their game.

He put out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

She smiled in return and held out a dainty
hand. “Likewise, mister…?”

“Gray,” he replied. “Cameron Gray. Friends
call me Cam.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Gray. I’m Roberta.” She
dipped her head in deference.

“Roberta?” asked Sava. Something made her
nose twitch. “Let me see your tag.” When the synthetic stared back blankly, she
added, “Your wrist, let me see it.”

“Of course,” said Roberta, lifting her hand.

“
Other
wrist,” said Sava. She reached
out before Roberta could lift her right arm.

Sava scratched a small square of skin on Roberta’s
wrist; it glowed white briefly.

“Well?” asked Cam.

“Not a logging error.” Sava checked
Roberta’s other wrist just to be sure. “She’s not tagged, which means they’ve
started a new line or she’s a prototype.” There was a hint of worry in her
voice.

“Is that a problem?”

Sava took a step back and considered Roberta.
“I can’t believe they’d pull a stunt like this. Excuse me, I need to make a
phone call.”

Roberta watched with detachment as Sava left
the room. When she was gone, the synthetic turned her brown eyes to Cam and
blinked.

“Your girlfriend?” she asked.

Cam’s laughter brought a smile to Roberta’s
face.

“Absolutely not,” he replied. “She’s more
into your creator.”

“My creator?”

“Yeah, you know, the one who designed you.”

Roberta cocked her head to the side.

“Interesting,” she said.

Cam discovered a manicured garden neatly tucked behind the
W. G. Walter Spiritual Center next door to Southpoint. He spotted it as he was
escorting Roberta out of a back door while Sava was busy in the showroom
arguing in hushed tones with Maddox and whoever was unlucky enough to be on the
other end of her phone.

Outside, the air smelled fresher than the
artificially scented environment of the screening room. Cam took a deep breath
as he sat down on a bench next to a rose bush. Roberta took the seat beside
him.

She was no less stunning in natural light,
prompting Cam to take another picture to send over to Banks.

His response read
keep it in your pants
.

Easier said than done. This thing sitting in
front of him was more than an amalgamation of circuitry and code. And yet, he
was having a hard time trying to define just exactly what she was.

“I’ve got the situation in hand,” wrote Cam.

Banks didn’t acknowledge his humor.

“It’s a beautiful day,” said Roberta,
looking to the sky. She lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

“Do you mind if I ask you some questions,
Roberta?”

“About me?”

“Yes, about you.” Cam pulled his press badge
and showed it to her. “I’m with Banks Media out of Los Angeles. I’m here to
find out what life is like in Perion City.”

“Okay,” said Roberta. She fidgeted under her
black sweater and white blouse; her fingers held the edges of her sleeves
against her palms.

“Alright, first question,” said Cam, swiping
his sliver. “What’s four plus four?”

“Eight,” answered Roberta.

“And the capital of California?”

“Sacramento.”

“And the diameter of the earth?”

Roberta paused. “I thought you wanted to
know about me.”

“I do. These are just some baseline
questions I ask everyone.”

“Really?”

“I promise. Now, diameter of the earth?”

Roberta smiled and shook her head. “I don’t
know, Mr. Gray. I bet we could look it up though.”

“Would you?” asked Cam.

“Alright.” Roberta tapped her empty pockets.
“I seem to have forgotten my phone. Can I use yours?”

“Can’t you just retrieve the answer
wirelessly?”

Some art school prodigy had done a damn good
job of programming Roberta to simultaneously lift and push her eyebrows
together. “Yes,” she said, drawing out the word. “I can do it wirelessly, but
I’ll need a
phone
or a palette or some kind of
wireless device
.”
She put air quotes around her last two words.

Cam made a note regarding her sarcasm.

“When performing CPR, what is the ratio of
chest compressions to breaths?”

“I heard you weren’t supposed to do the
breaths anymore, just the compressions. But you’d want to do about a hundred
compressions a minute.”

“How old are you?”

“I was born in 1990, so I’m twenty-five.”

“Where do you work?”

“In the Clerical department on the eleventh
floor of the Spire. I’m currently on vacation though.”

“Who holds the record for the most rushing
yards in a rookie season, before they allowed augmentations?”

“I have no clue.”

“What’s your favorite color, Roberta?”

She leaned in and smiled. “What’s yours?”

Cam took the moment to catch his breath. His
sliver was flashing happily, but it was only recording words, not the
expressions on Roberta’s face or the intent of the rapid-fire questioning.

“It’s gray,” he replied.

Roberta nodded. “I should have guessed. That’s
my favorite too.”

In the back of his mind, Cam heard Banks
clucking his tongue.

“It’s funny you say that,” said Cam. “It
makes me wonder if you’ve been telling the truth or not.”

“Why would I lie?”

“Because you can. I know for certain you
have the ability to calculate the fourteenth digit of pi, but if I asked you
to, you’d probably say you can’t. So either your programming is crippled or
you’ve been instructed not to act like a machine and spout off statistics
without consideration for whether the average person would know the answer.
It’s like you’ve been purposefully dumbed down from the super-intelligent
synthetic you are to a slightly above-average human.”

“You’re being quite rude,” said Roberta, her
eyes narrowing.

“What if I had said my favorite color was
red, would you have changed your answer?”

“No, I told you. It’s gray.”

“But how do I know yours was gray before I
told you mine?”

Roberta crossed her arms and looked away.
“Believe what you want, Mr. Gray. My feelings aren’t dependent on your trust.”

“That’s… a good point,” said Cam.

“I know it is,” said Roberta. She brushed a
section of her hair away from her cheek, reminding Cam of her wrist.

“What’s your sign?” asked Cam.

Roberta faked a calming breath.

“Virgo,” she said softly. “It means Virgin.”

A flash of gleaming metal caught Cam’s eye
through the rose bush and within seconds, the garden was filled with half a
dozen Scorpios, though they looked more specialized than the synthetics at
Outpost Alpha. Where those had been dressed in desert camo, these AGs were clad
in black suits—their uniforms were more formal than functional. If it hadn’t
been for the silver machine guns in their hands—all of which were pointed in
Cam’s direction—someone could have mistaken them for businessmen.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing,
Gray?”

It was Sava’s voice, but with a biting edge
Cam hadn’t heard before. He turned to face her.

“Are you out of your mind?” she screamed. “I
don’t give a shit how well-connected you think you are, you
don’t
walk
off with a million dollar prototype. You’re lucky I don’t let these guys blow
your head off. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Finally, a glimpse of the real Savannah
Kessler.

Cam stood up slowly, stowing his phone in
his pocket.

Roberta followed suit beside him.
Her eyes jumped from one machine gun to the next, and for some pre-programmed
reason, she stepped closer to Cam.

“First of all,” said Cam, “I meant no
disrespect. This wasn’t an elaborate heist or an attempt to hide anything. Why
you thought it was necessary to bring guns into this is beyond me. Hell, you
can see the car we came in from here.” He pointed to the Nissan parked at the
curb. “You wouldn’t have been able to leave without spotting us. Second of all,
the lady looked like she could use some fresh air. She came of her own free
will.”

Sava’s eyes flashed red. “Fucking
outlander,” she mumbled. With a wave of her hand, she dismissed the
well-dressed AGs. “You’re really testing my hospitality, Gray.”

How quickly formality broke down, thought
Cam.

“I don’t want or need your hospitality,
Kessler
.
This isn’t a vacation for me. I’m here because my boss has an arrangement with
your boss—that’s it. I’ve got directives you aren’t even privy to and at no
point in the description of those directives was I told to take direction from
a power-tripping flack with trust issues.”

Sava started to respond, but turned her
attention to Roberta instead. “Get inside. Mr. Maddox is waiting for you.”

“You’re not her master,” said Cam. “If she
wants to stay out here with me, then that’s her choice.”

“Stay with you? You’re not even authorized
to know she exists.”

“Do I really have to pull rank on this one?
You don’t think I could get Banks to make this happen?”

Cam held out his phone to sell the threat.
Before Sava could answer, the display lit up with a curt message from Banks
that read
on it
.

Sava looked like she wanted to hit him. “Try
it, just fucking try—”

A screeching ringtone interrupted her. With
one eye on Cam, she stepped away to answer the phone.

“You could cut the tension with a knife,”
whispered Roberta.

Cam turned his head slowly.

“You’re very perceptive,” he said. “Does
this kind of thing bother you?”

“It’s difficult to say. I feel empathy for
both of you.”

“What if she had hit me?”

Roberta smiled and took another step closer.
She touched Cam lightly on the arm. “It would have been the last punch she ever
threw.”

Cam stared at the delicate fingers on his
arm until she removed them.

“Gray, huh?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Gray.”

“Son of a cock,” yelled Sava.

She tried for several seconds to squeeze the
life out of her phone. When it wouldn’t crumble in her hand, she shoved it into
her purse. Her fingers came out holding a code card, the kind popular among
Hollywood synth enthusiasts and Los Angeles synth addicts. She used her thumb
to break the seal and slid out the electrode in one smooth movement.

Not her first time, thought Cam.

Sava held the card to the back of her neck,
all the while staring coldly at Cam. Within seconds, her gaze softened and the
anger began to drain out of her. Her shoulders relaxed and her stance changed
from aggressive to casual.

Cam had done numerous stories on code cards
for the general health hashes of the Banks Media feed; he even had his own
stash of green and black cards back at the house for special occasions. It was
the same synth haze anywhere he went, but what differed with Sava’s was the
speed at which the code overtook her body.

This wasn’t some dime-card South Central
junk she was loading. This was prime, maybe even local.

Drug abuse in the heart of Perion City; the
headline wrote itself.

With an even voice, Sava said, “Since you no
longer require my assistance, I’ll leave you to your job, Mr. Gray. We do have
a dinner reservation at Chez Cosimo at seven. If you and Roberta are not in
attendance, I will send a hundred AGs to find you. If you try to leave the
city, I will have you shot on sight and then dismembered.”

“So, formal wear?” asked Cam.

“Roberta, directive.”

Roberta’s body stiffened.

“Imprint protocol Bravo.”

“Subject?” asked Roberta.

“Cameron Gray,” said Sava. Then, with none
of Cam’s flourish, “With Banks Media out of Los Angeles.”

The synthetic nodded as a shiver went up her
body. She looked around as if she hadn’t been paying attention. When her eyes
fell on Cam, she smiled.