The Body Electric - Special Edition (35 page)

I reach my hand out to the door labeled
Shepherd, Rose, Vers. 1.

The body inside is my mom’s. It’s been frozen, like the others, the flesh solid and unforgiving. I touch the hair. It’s brittle and crumbles in my hand. Her flesh is hard, like ice, and her hands are folded over her stomach. I glance behind me at the dead copy of mom on the reverie chair. There was something inside that corpse that was my mother, but maybe that was the only thing. Just another version. Whatever science this is, it rips a soul from a person and puts it in a hybrid of human and machine. A cyborg-clone with a human soul.

I look down at my hands, where the pieces of my mother’s hair clings to my fingertips. “And this one, Version 1. Do you think this is my real mother? The original?”

Jack doesn’t answer.

I look down at the frozen body.

“How long…?” I start to say, but the words die in my mouth. How long has my real mother been dead? How long have these replacements been in my home instead? My heart bangs against my chest, and my breath comes out in shallow gasps. I think I’m having a panic attack.

Jack picks up a chart clipped near the door. “It says that with each transfer, your mother lost stability. They weren’t able to clone out the Hebb’s Disease, so she stayed sick.” He flips through the pages. “They were planning to phase out the ‘Rose model’ soon, anyway, because they couldn’t keep up with production.” He stops abruptly, slamming the charts down on the ground.

Cool air swirls around us as Jack closes the morgue doors in the wall, sliding my mothers back into their refrigerated graves.

And then I see it.

If before I was having a panic attack, all my organs banging around chaotically, now it feels as if my insides have shriveled up and withered away. Everything is silent and empty.

Something changes in Jack’s demeanor. His eyes get hard and cold, his body shifts. He’s looking past me, at the thing I’m looking at.

“Ella—”

But it’s too late. We have both already seen it. Three doors, three neat labels, in the column beside my mother’s.

Shepherd, Ella, Vers. 1

Shepherd, Ella, Vers. 2

Shepherd, Ella, Vers. 3

sixty-one

I don’t remember leaving the lab, or running through the upper city, or winding up at the Zunzana safe house.

I only remember the three doors, the three labels.

The three versions of me.

Jack tries to talk to me. He tells me I’m human. Not some pieced-together monster. That whatever type of “transfer” the reverie transfers in the lab detailed doesn’t involve me. That we didn’t look behind those doors labeled with my name, that I’m assuming the worst.

He doesn’t understand that I can’t even comprehend the worst. There are copies of me.

And… maybe I’m a copy of me.

If we had opened those doors, would “Version 1” be empty—meaning that I am the original? Or would there be a body with brittle hair and frostbitten lips in the door marked Version 1—and would it be Version 2 or 3 that was empty?

Jack, Julie, and Xavier retreat to a part of the house to discuss “plans.” I’m not stupid. They’re discussing me. What I am. If I can be trusted. If I should be put down, like Julie wants to do with Akilah. Maybe it’ll be simple, like unplugging a toaster.

Maybe I won’t feel a thing.

I sit at the kitchen table, feeling everything and nothing at the same time, like someone who’s been hurt so much they’re just numb to the pain now. The android is in the kitchen, working. I watch it. When I blink, it blinks. A programmed reflex.

I try to see where the human façade ends and the android begins. Androids have always reminded me of death, never more so than now, as I stare at this one, and realize that the most unnatural thing about its appearance is simply that its chest doesn’t move up and down as it breathes. If it had that one single additional feature, then it would appear alive.

My mother’s chest moved.
I know. I watched her like a hawk when she was sick, waiting for that moment when the inevitable end happened. She had a particularly bad attack just after my father died. I wonder now if that was the first time she was transferred to a cyclone body. She started seeing Dr. Simpa at the government labs around then. But anyway, Mom was sick, or the Mom I thought was Mom was sick or malfunctioning, or something—and I watched her. All night long. I counted her breaths, thankful for each one.

And then I saw Mom’s body. Bodies. Lots of them. All unbreathing, unmoving.

I take a deep breath, my hand on my chest, relishing the feeling of my lungs expanding, my ribs moving beneath my skin. I try to tell myself this is real, but I don’t know what to believe any more.

I try to figure out the facts of what has happened, and who I am. It’s been a habit of mine, breaking the world down into fact and fiction. But this is not a matter of black and white, right and wrong, android and human. Nothing is so easy, and besides—only androids think in nothing but facts.

“Who are you?” I ask the android softly. The lens in the android’s eyes shift as it zooms on my face, searching it for the clues it needs to properly respond.

“I am a Helpmate Model K, International Model. I have been given the user-friendly name Kim.” The android picks up a knife and starts chopping carrots, but while its head tilts down in a mimicry of humanity, its eyes still watch me. This model is androgynous, and could be made to easily look like either a boy or a girl, with short, black hair, high cheekbones, and a small frame. When I drop my eyes to the android’s hands, Kim follows suit, looking down as its knife speeds across the cutting board.

When I asked who it was, the android gave me a name. I am more than a name. I feel, I think, therefore I am.

Right?

“Kim, what happens if you slip?” I ask.

“Pardon?” the android says, sliding another carrot under the blade of the kitchen knife.

“What happens if you cut yourself?”

“I am programmed to handle all cooking tasks, including chopping.”

“But you could make a mistake.”

“Any errors in my program resulting in damage to my body would be covered under the Helpmate International Warranty. Would you like me to tell you about the warranty program?”

“No,” I say. The carrots are done. Kim scoops them into a bowl and turns to the stove, where a large pot of boiling broth awaits. It drops the carrots into the hot liquid, its hands closer to the steam than a human’s would be.

“Does it hurt?” I ask softly.

“Please repeat your command,” Kim says, turning back to me.

“Can you feel pain?” I ask. Because I can.

“I am equipped with a standard application of electro-stimuli programmed throughout my body that will alert me if I am near to damaging myself,” Kim states. It picks up a large wooden spoon, stirring the carrots, and adds rosemary and thyme to the mix, crushing the herbs between its mechanical fingers before dropping them into the boiling soup.

“What would happen,” I ask, “if you put your hand inside that pot?”

“The pot is full of boiling liquid,” Kim replies automatically. “I am programmed to avoid hazards.”

“Would it hurt?” I sit up, leaning over the table that divides us.

“My electro-stimuli would register that my hand should move away from temperatures that may jeopardize my warranty.” Despite my questions, there is no fear in Kim’s voice, nothing but factual responses to my questions.

“Would it really damage you?” I ask.

“My synthesized silicone-based skin is designed specifically to be able to handle extreme temperatures in the event of an emergency. An emergency situation would not void the warranty if any damage were to happen.”

So, no. I’m talking to an oversized potholder.

“Stick your hand in the soup,” I say.

“There is no emergency situation that would warrant such an action,” Kim replies, utterly emotionless.

“Command: stick your hand in the soup.”

Kim holds the spoon with its right hand, but its left hand hovers over the edge of the pot.

It hesitates.

“Why aren’t you doing what I ordered?” I say, throwing back my chair and staring at it.

Kim’s eye-lens shift, staring from me to its own hand. “I… am not in an emergency situation,” it says. “Such an action may void any warranty—”

“I gave you a direct command, regardless of the warranty,” I say. My voice has grown eerily calm. I don’t know why this means so much to me. The android can’t feel pain. The heat won’t damage it. This will prove nothing—but I have to see it happen, regardless.

The android still hesitates. I can see steam condensing on its false skin, and its fingers shake, but its hand doesn’t lower.

“Are you…
scared?
” I ask, my eyes growing wide.

“I am programmed to avoid damage,” the android states in its utterly void voice. “My electro-stimuli system is warning me that this action is unnecessary and potentially dangerous. My senses have been increased, causing my system to lock up. I have registered your command, but my programming is overriding my obedience.”

“That’s what fear is,” I say. I feel tears welling in my eyes. “Kim, I release you from all my previous commands. Continue with your processes.”

The android takes a step back, dropping its left hand to the side and stirring the soup again. There is no tension in the way it stands before the stove, no anger or rebellion. Just acceptance.

sixty-two

There is only one person who knows what I may be, and she wants to kill me.

Still, I make my way downstairs, to the panic room and the shell of my former best friend. As I reach the solid steel doors, though, I hear voices. I don’t intend to eavesdrop, but as I reach the bottom step, I hear Jack say my name. I lean against the wall by the door, focusing on the low voices in the room.

“So… she’s an android?” Julie asks.

“The labs called them ‘cy-clones,’” Jack answers. “A sort of combination of machine and person.”

“Machines can be hacked.” Xavier’s voice is so low I almost can’t distinguish his words.

“We’re not even sure she
is
a so-called cy-clone,” Jack answers, his voice raised in anger.

“I can do some testing.” My heart stops at Xavier’s words—testing? Like I’m some sort of lab rat?

“You might have been a med student, but that doesn’t make you a doctor,” Jack snaps. “And besides, we don’t have the resources.”

“You said she had a higher nanobot count than normal, right?” Julie says. “How high?”

Jack doesn’t answer—or at least not loud enough for me to hear. When I was born, I was a collection of blood and bones and flesh. Would the addition of tiny, microscopic little robots change me all that much?

“That could be how they’re created,” Xavier says after a moment. “You said in the lab you saw evidence of cloned organs and synthetic, cyborg parts. Add in nanobots as the glue to hold the human pieces together with the machined parts, and you get a person.”

“Half human and half machine,” Julie says in a low voice.

“Oh, I don’t know if it’s fair to call anything like that human at all.” Xavier’s words cut me to the bone—even if I don’t know if my bone is real or metal.

“She’s not some monster!” Jack says, his voice rising again. “She’s still Ella—still
human
.”

The others don’t answer.

I look down at my hands. Metal for bones, hidden behind real flesh. The ultimate android. A
thinking
robot. Is
that
all I am? A clone, a copy of my original self, strategically enhanced through a mix of cyborg technology—alloy bones, additional processors in the brain, things like that. And, of course, nearly every neuron in the body with a nanobot attached to it, keeping me together.

“Look at this,” Xavier says, and the room goes dark. I press my face against the crack in the door, peering inside. Akilah lies on the gurney, still knocked out from the sedatives. A holographic projection hovers above her—her body, shimmering in the light. Xavier reaches his hands into the hologram, and then throws his arms apart. On one side is the muscular structure of Akilah’s body, on the other, the skeletal.