Betrayed and confused, Ivan shook his head. Inga grasped his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. Her gesture told him she was ready to fight if he decided that’s what they should do.
Molenski chuckled.
“Oh, isn’t this sweet, the mechanical lovebirds, come home to roost,” said Molenski, each word dripping with oily scorn. His contempt was lost on Ivan, whose eyes were busily moving around the room, calculating where to begin his fight.
First Andre. He knew it would be difficult, Molenski’s lieutenant was as quick as a snake and enormously capable, then…
“ARE YOU LISTENING, YOU BIG DUMMY!”
Ivan’s eyes ceased their calculated movement and fell upon the Russian. Molenski stubbed out his cigar on the arm of the seat and stood up before stabbing his finger at his former bodyguard.
“This bullshit ends here! I didn’t pay a fucking fortune to bring you back from the dead so you could have a romance with another fucking machine!”
Ivan’s eyes widened.
“What?”
“Oh, come on! Are you telling me you really don’t know?”
Ivan’s blank face told him all he needed to know.
“You’re a fucking robot too!”
Ivan looked at the Russian with a pitying look. He had always been unhinged, but clearly Molenski had lost it completely now.
Molenski laughed and stared up at the ceiling.
“Well, fuck me. He still doesn’t believe it.”
He raised his gun and without a word shot Ivan in the chest.
29
There were gasps of shock from the onlookers.
Ivan was forced backward by the hammer blow of the bullet, fell against the counter, knocking off the plate he had put there earlier. Inga embraced him, her soft yet strong arms supporting him as he struggled to stay on his feet.
Molenski’s laughter echoed around the room.
He clamped his hand over the wound and felt warm blood seeping through his fingers. He looked at Inga as he leaned drunkenly against the counter, wanting her to be the last thing he saw.
Then something strange happened. The deep pain emanating from the impact of the bullet began to dissipate. The wound still burned like a bitch, but he was now able to breathe. To think.
“Get up, you big dummy. You’re not dying. You’re a fucking machine. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” said Molenski, clearly enjoying the show.
Ivan shook his head as if trying to shake off the Russian’s words. He looked at Inga. Her pretty face was serious.
She nodded.
Is it true then?
Ivan tilted his bloody hand down and away from the wound. The ragged hole smiled at him like a hateful mouth. The men in the room watched, like a rapt audience watching a particularly good horror movie. Ivan brought his other hand up and, using two fingers from each hand, dug into the wound and pulled it open.
The pain of his skin ripping at the top and bottom of the lesion was real… as was the confusion in his mind when he saw the red streaked metal an inch or so inside the ragged wound.
If Ivan hadn’t been in shock, he would have noticed looks of wonder and disgust on the faces around him. Only Molenski, the person he didn’t recognize, and Inga seemed unperturbed. He leaned dangerously as he suffered his most vivid episode of déjà vu ever.
When the feeling had passed his brain began to churn with denial. Even though he had survived a bullet to the chest. Even though, he had seen the metal beneath his skin.
I am me. I am Ivan Petrovic, age 36. I grew up in Moscow and came to America with Molenski when I was a young boy. But…
He stood up straight and looked at Molenski.
“How is it even possible?”
“Ahh, is the penny finally dropping on the big dummy’s head? I saved your scrawny ass in Moscow, and I saved it again when you were shot to pieces. That’s how it’s possible.”
Ivan shook his head.
“You were dead meat, my friend. The doctors couldn’t believe you were alive. They fished 36 bullets out of you before you died on the operating table.”
“That’s impossible; I remember waking up.”
“Of course, you do. In a private facility. A private facility owned by Genitix. And guess who is a majority and silent shareholder? Even little miss smarty pants Marina doesn’t know that. But seriously, you should be proud Ivan. You were the first of your kind. A dead man’s mind downloaded into a machine. A test case, one that I can say was a roaring success until this robot cunt came along.”
“But why?”
“Why not? You were a good bodyguard. I had invested a lot of time and money in you, and here you were about to check out on me. Your crisis was an opportunity to test new technology on a real human. I wasn’t about to let that slip through my fingers.”
“But I eat! I breathe, I shit…” said Ivan, desperately trying to find a reason to deny what he already knew.
“Explain,” Molenski snapped at the man that Ivan didn’t recognize.
The man stepped forward and pushed his glasses further up his nose.
“You don’t do any of those things. We call your programming ‘Ghost Imperative’. To preserve the sanity of the downloaded psyche, the program continuously imprints mimicked human functions like eating and going to the bathroom over your day to day existence. They are randomly introduced, like advertisements in a TV show, based on the normal biorhythms and bodily functions of a real person. You may remember eating, drinking, going to the toilet or even masturbating, but you never do. The only thing you really do is sleep, or more accurately hibernate, the same way a computer does.”
It was then that he looked down at the dropped plate. The plate he had eaten his dinner from earlier. The plate he had emptied with relish, even wiping the last of the gravy from it with his finger.
Except, it wasn’t empty. The contents of the plate the chef had prepared for him earlier were there, splattered in living color under the broken plate.
“Do you ever have feelings of Déjà vu?”
Ivan nodded without looking up from the mess on the floor. The man knew that Ivan finally understood. Not without sympathy, he went on.
“There are only so many ‘ghost’ scenarios we can input. Thus you get the feeling it has all happened before sometimes.”
Something snapped in Ivan’s mind, something that felt like the cable of a heavy suspension bridge.
“Why tell me now then?” he asked, in a quiet voice.
“Because, dickhead,” said Molenski, “I needed this bullshit to stop now. That’s my property you’ve been running around with, and she’s brought a shit storm down on my head.”
Another cable snapped, and the bridge of Ivan’s mind tilted dangerously.
“So, are you going to kill… deactivate me?”
“No, you are worth too much to me. The research has been invaluable. We are about to go to market with Ghost Directive, and it will make me fucking billions. You won’t be deactivated, you will be reprogrammed.” He gestured to Inga. “Her on the other hand, well she will be deactivated – but first, I will let you watch me cut her into tiny little pieces.”
“You will not touch her.”
“Oh, I’ll do more than fucking touch her, dummy. I am going to flay her…”
The final cable snapped.
Molenski saw it and realized he had pushed too far.
“Disable them,” he ordered. “Now!”
The Genitix man reached into his pocket even as Ivan’s hand whipped out and grabbed Andre’s gun hand, twisting it sharply. Bones snapped and the gun dropped to the floor as he grabbed the squat man by the throat.