Droids And Bots

Chapter 10

Dr. Erland glared into the quarantine room, a growl humming in the back of his throat. Pulling his shoulders back, he tugged down on his lab coat. “Placebo him. ”

“Pla—but he’s not sick!”

“Yes, but if we don’t give him anything, the treasury will wonder what we’re doing down here. Now, give him a placebo and submit a report so he can be on his way. ”

The girl huffed and went to grab a labeled vial from a shelf. “What are we doing down here?”

Dr. Erland held up a finger, but the girl gave him such an irritated look that he forgot what he’d been about to say. “What’s your name again?”

She rolled her eyes. “Honestly. I’ve only been your assistant every Monday for the past four months. ”

She turned her back on him, her long black braid whipping against her hip. Dr. Erland’s eyebrows drew together as he stared at the braid, watching as it wound itself up, curling in on itself. A shiny black snake rearing its head. Hissing at him. Ready to strike.

He slammed shut his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them again, the braid was just a braid. Shiny black hair. Harmless.

Pulling off his hat, Dr. Erland took a moment to rub at his own hair, gray and considerably less full than his assistant’s.

The visions were getting worse.

The door to the lab room opened. “Doctor?”

He jolted and stuffed his head back into the hat. “Yes?” he said, grabbing his portscreen. Li, another assistant, lingered with his hand on the doorknob. Dr. Erland had always liked Li—who was also tall but not as tall as the girl.

“There’s a volunteer waiting in 6D,” said Li. “Someone they brought in last night. ”

“A volunteer?” said the girl. “Been a while since we had one of those. ”

Li pulled a portscreen from his breast pocket. “She’s young too, a teenager. We haven’t run her diagnostics yet, but I think she’s going to have a pretty high ratio. No skin grafting. ”

Dr. Erland perked up, scratching his temple with the corner of his port. “A teenage girl, you say? How…” He fumbled for an appropriate descriptor. Unusual? Coincidental? Lucky?

“Suspicious,” said the girl, her voice low. Dr. Erland turned, found her glower bearing down on him.

“Suspicious? Whatever do you mean?”

She perched ag

ainst the edge of the counter, diminishing her height so she was eye level, but she still seemed intimidating with her folded arms and unimpressed scowl. “Just that you’re always more than willing to placebo the male cyborgs that come in, but you perk right up when you catch word of a girl, especially the young ones. ”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then started again. “The younger, the healthier,” he said. “The healthier, the fewer complications we’ll have. And it isn’t my fault that the draft keeps picking on females. ”

“Fewer complications. Right. Either way, they’re going to die. ”

“Yes, well. Thank you for the optimism. ” He gestured to the man on the other side of the glass. “Placebo, please. Come join us when you’ve finished. ”

He stepped out of the lab room, Li at his side, and cupped a hand around his mouth. “What is her name again?”

“Fateen?”

“Fateen! I can never remember that. One of these days, I’ll be forgetting my own name. ”

Li chuckled, and Dr. Erland was glad he’d made the joke. People seemed to overlook an old man losing his mind if he occasionally made light of it.

The hallway was empty save for two med-droids lingering by the stairwell, awaiting orders. It was a short walk to lab room 6D.

Dr. Erland pulled a stylus from behind his ear and tapped at his port, downloading the information Li had sent him. The new patient’s profile popped up.

Li opened the door to the lab. Tucking the stylus back behind his ear, Dr. Erland entered the room with twitching fingers.

The girl was lying on the table on the other side of the viewing window. The sterile quarantine room was so bright he had to squint into the glare. A med-droid was just capping a plastic vial filled with blood and plunking it onto the chute, sending it off to the blood lab.

The girl’s hands and wrists had been fastened with metal bands. Her left hand was steel, tarnished and dark between the joints as if it needed a good cleaning. Her pant legs had been rolled up her calves, revealing one human leg and one synthetic.

“Is she plugged in yet?” he asked, slipping his port into his coat pocket. Nora stared at the holograph and imagined watching herself die. In real time.

“How many different batches of antibodies have you gone through?”

“Med?”

“Twenty-seven,” said the med-droid.

“But,” said the foreign voice, “they die a little slower each time. ”

Nora crinkled the tissue paper beneath her fingertips.

“I believe we’re all ready. Med, please proceed with syringe A. ”

Something clattered on the table, and then the android was beside her. A panel was open in its torso, revealing a third arm ending in a syringe, like those in the emergency androids.

Nora tried to pull away, but she had nowhere to go. Imagining the headless voice on the other side of the mirror, watching, laughing at her vain struggles, she froze and tried her best to hold still. To be strong. To not think about what they were doing to her.

The android’s prongs were cold as they gripped Nora’s elbow, still bruised from having blood taken twice in the past twelve hours. She grimaced, muscles pulling taut to her bones.

“It is easier to find the vein if you are relaxed,” the android said in a hollow voice.

Nora tensed her arm’s muscles until they were shaking. A snort came through the speakers, as if the disembodied voice was amused by her antics.

The android was well-programmed. Despite her rebellion, the needle punctured her vein on the first try. Nora gasped.

A pinch. Just a pinch. The fight drained out of her as the clear liquid ran in.

Book Two

In the evening, when she was exhausted from working, they took away her bed, and she had to lie next to the hearth in the ashes.

Chapter Nine

“SUCCESSFUL TRANSMITTAL OF THE CARRIERS,” SAID LI. “ALL reactions appear normal. Blood pressure stabilizing. Signs of stage two expected around 0100 tomorrow morning. ” He clapped his hands and spun in his chair to face Dr. Erland and Fateen. “That means we can all go home and take naps, right?”

Dr. Erland sniffed. He traced his finger along the screen before him, slowly turning the holographic image of the patient. Twenty little green lights were flickering along her bloodstream, spreading slowly through her veins. But he had seen that before, dozens of times. It was the rest of her that held his interest now.

“Have you ever seen anything like her before?” said Fateen, standing beside him. “The sales from her control panel alone will cover the family payoff. ”

Dr. Erland tried to give her an unimpressed glare, but it was less than effective when he had to tilt his head back to look up at her. Snarling, he scooted away and turned back to the holograph. He tapped on the top of the glowing spine, where two metal vertebrae connected, and enlarged the image. What had been a small shadow before now appeared too substantial, too geometric.

Fateen crossed her arms and bent down. “What is that?”

“I’m not sure,” said Erland, rotating the image for a better view.

“It looks like a chip,” said Li, getting up to join them.

“On her spine?” said Fateen. “What good would that do her?”

“I’m just saying that’s what it looks like. Or maybe they messed up on the vertebrae and had to reweld it or something. ”

Fateen pointed. “This is more than just welding though. You can see the ridges here, like it’s plugged into…” She hesitated.

They both faced Dr. Erland, whose eyes were following a small green dot that had just floated into the holograph’s viewing range. “Like a vicious green firefly,” he muttered to himself.

“Doctor,” said Fateen, snapping his attention back to her, “why would she have a chip plugged into her nervous system?”

He cleared his throat. “Perhaps,” he said, pulling spectacles from his breast pocket and sliding them onto his nose, “her nervous system experienced traumatic damage. ”

“From a hover accident?” said Li.

“Spinal injuries used to be quite common before computer-operated navigation took over. ” Dr. Erland scratched his nail across the screen, pulling the holograph back to show her whole torso. He squinted into the lenses, his fingers flittering over the image.

“What are you looking for?” asked Fateen.

Dr. Erland dropped his hand and glanced at the immobile girl on the other side of the window. “Something is missing. ”

The scar tissue around her wrist. The dull sheen of her synthetic foot. The grease beneath her fingertips.

“What?” said Li. “What’s missing?”

Dr. Erland stepped closer to the window and pressed a sweating palm against the counter. “A little green firefly. ”

Behind him, Li and Fateen traded glances, before spinning back to the holograph. They each began their count, him silently, her out loud, but Fateen paused on number twelve with a gasp.

“One just disappeared,” she said, pointing to an empty spot on the girl’s right thigh. “A microbe, it was right here, I was looking right at it, and now it’s gone. ”

As they watched, two more dots flickered and disappeared, like burned-out lightbulbs.

Li grabbed his portscreen off a desk and pounded his fingers against it. “Her immune system is going berserk. ”

Dr. Erland leaned into the microphone. “Med, please draw another blood sample. Quickly. ” The girl jolted to attention at the sound of his voice.

Fateen joined him at the window. “We haven’t given her the antidote yet. ”

“No. ”

“So how…”

Dr. Erland bit down on a thumbnail to tame the rush of giddiness. “I need to go get that first blood sample,” he said, backing away, almost afraid to take his eyes from the cyborg girl. “When all the microbes have disappeared, have her taken into lab four. ”

“Lab four isn’t set up for quarantine,” said Li.

“Indeed. She won’t be contagious. ” Dr. Erland snapped his fingers, halfway out the door. “And perhaps have the med untie her. ”

“Untie—” Fateen’s face contorted with disbelief. “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? She was violent with the med-droids, remember?”

Li folded his arms. “She’s right. I know I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of that fist if she got angry. ”

“In that case, you have nothing to fear,” said Dr. Erland. “I’ll be meeting with her in private. ”

Chapter Ten

Nora STARTED WHEN THE MYSTERY VOICE FILLED THE room again, demanding another blood sample from the sacrificial lamb. She glared at the mirror, ignoring the med-droid as it prepared a new needle with robotic efficiency.

She fought down a gulp, moistening her throat. “How long before I get the pretend antidote?”

She waited, but there was no answer. The android clipped its metal claws around her arm. She flinched at the cold, then again as the needle poked into her sore elbow.