Maddy sighed. ‘All right, then.’ She looked at the shape floating in the goo. ‘That thing may not have the brute strength of the last one, but at least you’d have Bob’s AI and database along with you.’ Maddy turned to him. ‘And this is just a scouting mission anyway. Just a quick visit to see what happened to Chan.’
Liam’s face hardened. ‘That’s what Foster said to me the last time
… and look what happened. I got stuck in the middle of an invasion for six months.’
Maddy reached a hand out and touched his arm. ‘Well, this time we’ll just be more cautious.’
He chewed his lip in thought for a moment, then finally nodded. ‘Jeez… all right. I suppose if it’s just a quick look-see.’
Maddy gently slapped his shoulder. ‘Good. Sal?’
‘Yes?’
‘Let’s birth it.’
‘OK.’
Sal squatted down on her haunches to tap the command into the small control panel at the bottom of the cylinder.
‘Er… Liam?’ said Maddy.
‘Yes?’
‘Would you mind?’
‘Mind? Mind what?’
‘A little privacy?’
‘Uh?’
Maddy sighed. ‘It may just be a mindless blubbering clone right now… but it’s still a lady.’
Liam was still sulking at being kicked out of the back room when the metal door to the hatchery finally slid to one side with a shrill squeak of un-oiled rollers. Maddy and Sal emerged through the doorway first, beaming like a pair of proud midwives. They ushered a pale shuffling form wrapped in a long towel out into the light of the main arch.
Liam studied her; she was taller than the other two and, of course, as Bob had first been when he’d been dumped out of the bottom of his tube, she was completely bald. Yet, despite that, he realized she was — and he felt a little queasy admitting this to himself — quite beautiful.
‘Uh… hello,’ he said awkwardly.
The clone stared at him curiously as the girls led her across the arch towards the table and armchairs. Her pale skin glistened, wet with the goo she’d been floating in only moments ago, and the smell — like a rancid meat stew — wafted across to him, turning his stomach.
‘Hello there,’ said Liam again as they sat her down opposite him.
‘Flug herr gufff slurb,’ the clone replied, dark brown slime dribbling out of the side of her mouth and down her chin.
‘Right,’ said Maddy to Liam. ‘You can get acquainted while I sort out uploading Bob’s AI.’
He nodded, his eyes still locked on the clone. She seemed to have little of the bulging musculature of Bob… athletic, though, not bulky like he’d been last time.
Bob.
Bob? Liam, you idiot.
He realized that it was stupid to think of that first ape-like clone as Bob; it had merely been the organic vehicle that Bob’s AI code had first used. But still, he mused, Bob’s ‘personality’ — if he could actually use that word — had been formed inside that big brute. It was almost impossible not to think of him as a big, clumsy, Panzer tank of a man, with fuzzy coconut hair and a voice as deep and rumbling as one of the trains that regularly rattled over the Williamsburg Bridge above them.
During the six months he’d been stuck in the past with him he’d grown attached to the big lumbering ape; not just the code in his head, but that expressionless vapid face of his, those horribly awkward smiles — more like a horse baring its teeth. He’d even cried when those men had gunned Bob down, riddling him with enough bullets to ensure that even his robust body had no hope of recovery. Cried as Bob had ‘died’ in his arms and he’d had to perform an act of surgery that since then he’d done his very best to blank from his memory.
Cried for Bob, although he’d never admit that to the others because it seemed silly. All that made Bob Bob had survived, had come back from the past in his blood-covered hand: a wafer of silicon containing his AI, every memory he had, all the learning, all the adapting, all the growing up he’d done in those six months in the past. That was Bob, not the tattered bullet-riddled corpse he’d left behind in the blood-spattered snow of 1941.
Liam looked again at the young… woman… in front of him: lean and athletic, a porcelain beauty to her face.
Her? HER? It’s an IT, Liam. IT… get it? Not a ‘her’. Just an organic vehicle. A meat robot.
Almost as if the clone could read his mind, it drooled another long spittle string of gunk out of the side of its mouth and grunted something unintelligible.
Sal giggled. ‘So like Bob, isn’t she? She could be his twin sister.’
Maddy returned from the desk to sit beside the female clone. ‘OK, Bob’s preparing the download protocols. He needs to handshake with this support unit’s in-built operating system before he can upload a copy of his AI into it.’
‘Uh… how does Bob get into her… its head?’ asked Liam. ‘Don’t you need some sort of a cable or something?’
‘Bluetooth,’ she replied wearily. ‘Yes, I know, that means nothing to you.’ She sighed. ‘OK. It’s a broadband wireless data communication protocol designed for low-latency short-distance transmission.’ Liam was still staring at her, slack-jawed and bemused. Maddy sighed again. ‘Information will fly through the air from the computer and into its head.’
‘Oh… right.’ Liam smiled. ‘Why didn’t you just say that in the first place?’
They heard a beep coming from the computer desk.
‘Uploading is starting now,’ said Maddy.
The clone sitting opposite Liam suddenly jerked upright and cocked her head like a dog hearing a dog-whistle.
He watched with fascination as the support unit’s eyes blinked rapidly with the data flooding into the tiny computer system built into the middle of its cranium — computer technology that came from the 2050s, technology immensely more powerful than their array of linked PCs beneath the computer desk.
The download of information took about ten minutes, then finally the female clone closed her eyes.
‘Installing,’ explained Maddy. ‘Then it will boot up again.’
After a few moments the clone looked up at them with eyes that now seemed to faintly glint with intelligence.
‘Bob?’ said Maddy, ‘you OK?’
The clone nodded awkwardly. ‘Affirmative.’ The voice was a deep growl, almost as deep as Bob’s old voice had been.
‘Jay-zus!’ Liam lurched. ‘That’s… weird.’
Sal pulled a face. ‘Ewww… jahulla! That’s just so-o-o wrong!’
‘I will adjust the vocal register,’ Bob’s barrel-deep voice rumbled. The support unit cocked its head then spoke again. ‘Is this better?’ The voice now the smooth upper-register of a teenage girl’s.
Maddy nodded. ‘Much better. I think we can safely say you’re not an it… you’re a she now.’
Liam shook his head as he studied it… him… her… Bob. ‘I feel very strange about this,’ he finally muttered. ‘Very strange indeed.’
CHAPTER 14
2001, New York
‘Now, she’s had all the biographical information about Edward Chan and details of the layout of the Texas Advanced Energy Research Institute uploaded. Isn’t that right?’
The support unit nodded as she lowered herself into the water beside Liam, wearing underwear that Maddy had self-consciously pulled out from beneath the sheets of her bunk and donated.
‘Affirmative. I have all the data required for this mission,’ the support unit replied sweetly.
Liam shook his head. ‘This is so weird. I mean… it’s great to have you back an’ all, Bob, but you’re a… you’re a…’ His glance flickered involuntarily for a moment towards the clone’s chest. He clasped his eyes shut. ‘Oh Jeez… you’re a girl, so you are!’
‘Recommendation: suggest this copy of my AI be given an appropriate unique identifier.’