The Saffron Malformation (92 page)

             
Ryla shunned the thought.  She’d been angry when she wrote it, and hadn’t fully understood the creatures that lived down there.  Still, why had she allowed the lower levels to continue on?

             
She let the thought go and found herself having to acknowledge that Jacob was right about one thing at least.  About boyfriend.

             
She looked over the other bots and knew they’d have purpose without her.  His purpose, however, vanished with her.  She sat at the computer and with a few strokes of the keyboard she summoned Boyfriend to find her.  When he arrived she removed a pin drive from one of the computers and inserted it into the port at the base of his neck.  It would take some time for him to load the software and reboot.  By the time he did, she’d be gone.

             
‘Finally,’ and, ‘what the hell,’ went through Quey’s mind simultaneously when Ryla came into the machine shop with Bowserbot and Mechaganon.  “They’ll be useful,” she said and Quey nodded once as he went to the cargo door at the back of the truck and opened it.

             
Once everyone and everything was loaded Quey climbed in behind the wheel of the moving truck and turned the engine over.

             
The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon as the cargo door on the far end of the garage rolled up, spilling a blinding glow of orange-red light across the floor and truck.  Quey shifted out of park and rolled into the waste, checking his mirror to be sure the others were following.  They followed an old dirt path south, away from the highway Quey usually took across the waste during his shine runs, and would continue on it for the better part of twenty kilometers before they met a paved road.  When they were half a kilometer out Ryla tapped a set of buttons on her sheet and the ground began to rumble.

             
“What the hell is that?” Rachel asked from the rear car.  Natalie and the kids were ahead of them and the truck was in the lead.

             
Arnie looked in the side mirror and his eyes gaped.  The building was lowering into the ground.  “Holy shit,” he said.

             
Rachel spun in her seat and watched it through the rear window.  “What the hell is that place?”

             
Arnie looked at her and shrugged.  “What do you think is in that basement?”

             
Where there had been a three-story structure only minutes ago there was now just a rooftop.

             
Quey and Ryla rode in silence for nearly twenty minutes.  She didn’t seem to notice.  He’d glance at her from time to time but she was simply sat watching the waste go past.  Truth was he was glad she was comfortable with silence.  The further along this plan moved the more it seemed to exhaust him.  Still, he had some curiosities and with a great stretch of road ahead, now seemed as good a time as any to deal with them.

             
“Can I ask you some things?”

             
She looked over at him.  “Yes.”

             
“It’s about you.  About,” he tried to think of a good way to put it and when he couldn’t he simply said, “How you work.”

             
“Okay.”

             
“You didn’t sleep last night.”

             
“No.”

             
“Do you?”

             
“Sleep?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Yes, but my sleep works differently.  I do not require ‘full rest’ more than once in one hundred and fifty two hours.”  She looked at him, saw him pondering and added, “About once a week.”

             
“But you sleep more than that?”

             
“If you mean a full rest yes, sometimes I do it more often.”

             
“Why?”

             
She shook her head.  “I don’t know.  Because I want to.”

             
“What does that mean anyway?  Full rest?”

             
“The hardware in my brain makes it possible for different parts of it to sleep at different times.  It’s similar to the way dolphins sleep.  It allows me to remain active while gaining the benefits of sleep, though I function at a diminished rate.”

             
“How diminished?”

             
“Depends on which part of my brain is asleep, though on the whole it mostly affects my ability to solve new problems.  I would not be useful for calculations or council while in a waking rest cycle, though I can still perform tasks and answer questions I all ready have knowledge of.  For instance, I could rest and maintain this conversation, but I could not rest and build a new robot.”

             
“Are you?”  When she didn’t answer he added, “Resting now.”

             
She shook her head.  “No.”

             
“These extra parts, what do they do?”

             
“They augment my functions.”

             
“What does that mean?”

             
“My organs and muscles are equipped with an organic circuit system designed to make them more efficient.  Inorganic hardware was implanted into the appropriate organic ports throughout my body to act as processing hubs.  There’s also a system that helps my immune system and my cell regeneration, though I’ve never been able to figure out what it is.”

             
“And,” he tried to think of the best way to put his next question.  “You feel things, right?”

             
“I don’t understand.”

             
“I mean… touch and stuff.”

             
She looked at him.  “Yes.”

             
“It’s just, that compound was cold and you never seemed to be and it’s not like you were wearing a whole lot.”

             
“I’m warmer than you by about two degrees without entering a heat conservation mode.  Sometimes I’ve gotten up to three or four, if I’ve been running certain functions for an extended period of time, but when in ‘heat conservation mode’ I can raise it higher.  Either way, keeping it cooler suits me, as my organic body isn’t allocated to this temperature.”  She glanced at him and simplified, “I always feel a bit warm.”  She paused for a moment, then added, “But it is easier for me to ignore things like cold.”

             
“You feel pain?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“But you can ignore it.”

             
“To an extent, if I want to.”

             
“Does it work the other way?  Can you intensify your senses?”

             
“I can but I can’t augment them as far as I can dull them.”

             
“Hmm, I wonder why that is?” he pondered more to himself than her.

             
“The body has limitations in that regard, or maybe it’s the brain.  Genetically speaking I am mostly human, after all.”  She looked at him until he glanced at her and agreed with a nod.  She looked through the windshield and went on.  “When the body experiences a sensation that’s too intense it goes into shock and begins shutting down, that’s its natural reaction, to dull sensation, and so I’m able to do that on my own with more ease.”

             
He looked at her and did his best to understand her, and perhaps he was beginning to.  Though he had to accept that there would always be something alien about her, that was no reason they couldn’t be friends.

             
She looked at him and he said, “So it worries you.  You think if people find out about the extra bits you have inside they’ll forget about the rest.”

             
She looked away from him and said softly, “You did.”

             
“I didn’t forget,” he told her.

             
After a long set of ticks she asked, “Why did you wait for me last night?”

             
He glanced to her.

             
“Why did you have sex with me?”

             
Quey swallowed hard.  “I don’t know,” he answered hollowly.

             
“Why did you the first time?”  When he didn’t answer she said, “Maybe you didn’t forget but you don’t see them as clearly.”

             
“It’s not the parts,” he told her.

             
“It’s how you found out about them?”

             
He nodded, “Yeah.”

             
“I think that’s an easy way to justify it.”

             
“What’s that mean?” he almost snapped defensively.

             
“It means when you’re wondering about me is it my omission you’re contemplating or whether anything I do or say is real?”

             
“I don’t know,” he said softly.

             
She struck him, the palm of her hand shot across the cab and connected with his face.  Startled, he jerked the wheel one way then the other to right their course again.  “What the hell,” he nearly shouted.

             
“I’ve answered all of your questions, submitted to every bit of scrutiny and all you can give me in return is I don’t know?”

             
He looked at her, gaping.

             
“Let me clue you in… you..,” her face scrunched up with the effort it took for her to think of something to call him.  All she came up with was, “you jerk.”  She was as good at name-calling as she was at lying, it seemed.  “I am a person.  I have feelings.  I have things I want to know.  So tell me why did you wait for me last night?”

             
“To have sex with you,” he admitted, ashamed.

             
“Why?”

             
“Because it feels good, really good.”  Then he muttered, “better than it should actually.”

             
“Better than it should?” she asked confused.

             
“And so I wanted to see if I could tell,” he went on.

             
“Tell what?”

             
“The reason for it.”

             
She stared at him.  When she spoke her voice was soft and trembled slightly.  “You wanted to see if the reason sex with me felt good was…?” she probed.

             
“I just… I don’t know how mechanical you are.”

             
It seemed like he might as well have struck her as she sat back in her seat and as far away from him as she could get.

             
He swallowed hard.  Embarrassed and a bit on the flustered side, he went on.  “I mean come on, the way you move, how you walk and type and paint… anything you do.  It’s too perfect.  It’s like every little thing is calculated.  Even your reactions to things, its like your emotions are completely separate from your thoughts.  People don’t do that.  People trip over their own feet from time to time.  People know the smart thing to do and choose something else because it feels better.  You don’t.”  She glanced up, watching him carefully.  “And it’s scary.”

             
“Scary why?”

             
He sighed, “I don’t know.  Because people like imperfections.”

             
“And that’s why you were there last night?  You wanted to see if you were fucking a machine?”

             
She’d never cursed outside of when they had sex before and it caught him off guard.  He looked over at her and she was the closest to crying he’d ever seen, not just shedding tears, like she had before, but actually crying.  It was only though effort so great he could see it that she managed not to.

             
“And what have you decided?” she asked, a bit of bitterness growing in her tone.  “Is that what you’re doing?  If so, then what am I?  What’s my function now?”

             
He felt the guilt of what he’d said like a belly of bad food.  He hadn’t really meant to hurt her but he had, though she’d hurt him too… hadn’t she?  “I don’t know why you’re upset,” he decided to defend himself.  “You did the same thing.”

             
“What do you mean?”

             
“The first time we had sex was an experiment for you.  You just wanted to see what it would be like to have real flesh inside you.”