“In the future, the changes now convulsing society will continue. Tsar Alexei, as your husband is poised to formally rename himself, will complete his control over Russia. Groznium and its attendant technologies will disappear entirely from the towns and provinces. All machines, and all power, will be consolidated in the cruel hands of the Tsar.”
“Dear merciful God,” Anna interjected, but Android Karenina bade her be still.
“But hope will survive, in the form of a resurgent UnConSciya, led by one exceptionally brave and intelligent man. With access to a small pocket of groznium, and a network of underground laboratories, this man and his cohort will keep the spirit of the Age of Groznium alive. In the deepest secrecy, and at the gravest risk, they will experiment, and eventually achieve great breakthroughs: in robotics, in armaments, in transportation. They will even revive what was once called… the Phoenix Project.”
“You mean…”
“Yes, Anna. Travel through time”
Anna tugged free her hair from its clip and felt her dark tresses tumble across her forehead, trying, as she often did in moments of emotional upheaval, to take comfort in her physical being. But now, she felt a painful sense that there was something false about her own beauty, something hostile.
“Eventually, this brave rebel leader and his cohort will hit upon a way to kill Tsar Alexei before his reign of destruction can begin.”
Anna’s eyes widened and her hands began to tremble.
“What… what…”
“Their plan will rest upon an ingenious new technology, the result of many painstaking years of labor and experimentation: an animalcular machine simply called the Mechanism, which can be implanted directly into the gray matter of a human’s brain. This microcosmical apparatus, once thusly embedded, preserves the biological processes of the host while slowly but irrevocably extending itself throughout the higher-level functioning of her neurological system-transforming the subject over time from a human into a highly sophisticated machine.”
“Such a thing cannot be,” Anna said, horrified.
“It can. Or, rather, it shall be. And yes, ethical objections will be raised, great debates will ensue, but ultimately the rebels of UnConSciya and their brave leader will make the only choice: the sacrifice of a single human being is a small price to pay to alter Russia ’s past, and thereby rescue her future. And so agents will be sent back through time to apply the Mechanism in the host for which it was expressly created.”
Anna cried out once, held her hands before her, and squeezed her eyes shut tightly. “Android Karenina, stop,” she wailed. “I command you to stop.”
“Many years ago, Anna Arkadyevna, you ceased to be a person, and became a machine-woman of an entirely new kind: the Android Karenina Class Twelve. A new kind of robot, one with a single raison d’être: to murder Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin.”
“I command you to stop!”
Anna sprawled herself out on the sofa, trembling, her face buried in her hands. No griefs of her life, none of her husband’s cruelties, no imagined betrayal committed by Alexei Kirillovich, not even the loss of her darling Sergey, compared with the suffering she now experienced.
“Why?” she sobbed. “Why create such a device… to seize, to appropriate the mind of a living person? Why not just build some… some weapon, some bomb to detonate at his bedside?”
“Because, dear Anna, the same equations that proved time travel possible also showed that the flow of history is exceedingly resistant to human tinkering. And so the nature of the target must dictate the nature of the weapon. Your husband, aided by the powers of the malevolent Class Three upon his face, maintains steely control over all elements of his life. He has long planned his rise to power; he has countless contingency plans and defenses ready in case of technological attack. He is the master of his world-with one exception: you. Within the intimate bounds of the home, he is vulnerable.”
“Please…”
“It had to be his wife. It had to be you.”
Anna wept silently on the sofa, not wanting to hear more, but helpless to move.
“As the Mechanism took root within you, its programming slowly amplified your natural distaste for a cold and awkward husband into utter repulsion. That hatred should have led you finally to kill him-but we underestimated the depth and power of your loving nature and your urge for freedom. Rather than letting your passion drive you to murder, you seized upon it to fuel your surprising new love for Count Vronsky. You abandoned Alexei Alexandrovich rather than slaying him-but, alas, Anna, that only hastened his descent into inhuman tyranny. Thus, despite all our years of secret struggle, the mission failed.”
Anna looked up, tears pouring down her face, trying to understand. “So the godmouth-the flower trap-all efforts by UnConSciya to… to destroy me?”
“No. Efforts to destroy Vronsky, in the hopes that with him dead, you would return to your household, take up again the mantle of unhappily dutiful wife, and complete your mission. But, again, the timestream is difficult to shift.”
Sadness and confusion filled Anna’s body like black ink poured into a glass. She felt, as she had felt so many times in the past, Android Karenina’s comforting embrace around her shoulders. Then her beloved-companion-no! a different android! oh, but beloved still-said: “It’s not too late.”
In her mind, burning and wild with emotion, Anna grasped at what she thought Android Karenina was telling her, and the strong face of Vronsky swam up before her mind. “Yes! It’s not too late-I have sent a note… he’ll return…” She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. “By now he has received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more… But what if he doesn’t come? No, that cannot be. He mustn’t see me with tear-stained eyes. I’ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?” she asked Android Karenina, who stared back at her, and then spoke again, her voice changing to a low, sad whisper.
“It is not too late to complete your mission, Anna. You can agree to follow the program.”
Anna stared back. “Android Karenina… no…”
“Go to Petersburg. Kill Alexei Alexandrovich with your own hands. You are the only one who can.”
“I am not a killer! I am a human being!”
“Alas… you are no longer.”
Anna Karenina jabbed wildly for her beloved-companion’s neck, but to no avaiclass="underline" this model had eliminated the exterior Surcease switch entirely. But when Android Karenina lifted her end-effectors from Anna’s shoulders to swat her away, Anna rolled off the sofa, leaped out the empty hole where the windowpane had been, and escaped down the street.
CHAPTER 16
IT WAS BRIGHT AND SUNNY. A fine ram had been falling all morning, and now it had not long cleared up. Anna tore along the rain-slicked streets, her boot heels skidding on the muddied stones, racing through the broad avenues and down the grimy alleys of Moscow, in and out of crowds, around corners, past posters bearing the formidable non-face of her husband. It was not long before she heard the clatter of metal footsteps close behind her. Android Karenina Class IX, her pursuer, her shadow, similarly dressed, of similar shape and size-and constructed, she now knew, of the same materials that hid within her own being. She herself, hot on her own heels.
How can I do what she bids me? Anna asked herself. To slay my own husband, with my own hands, in cold blood-no matter what kind of monster he is or may become! I have done many selfish things, and yes, I have been crueler than I meant to be, but I am not a murderer!