I turn my turret away from him. I know I shouldn’t blame him. He did everything he could to prepare me. But I’m still angry. I want to punch something.
After three more steps I’m in front of the door. The soldiers raise their assault rifles and slowly back off, one to my left and the other to my right. They’re pointing their guns at my torso, which is a mistake. I have two-inch-thick armor plating around my midsection to protect my batteries and neuromorphic circuits. The soldiers would be better off aiming at the sensors in my turret. I’m surprised no one told them this.
“No!” Dad yells at the soldiers. “Don’t shoot! You’re not authorized to shoot!”
The greatest danger, I realize, is a ricochet. If these idiots fire at me, the bullets will bounce off my armor, and the ricocheting slugs might hit one of the soldiers, or maybe Dad. I have to do something quick. I send simultaneous commands to both my arms, which telescope to their full length of six feet in a hundredth of a second. Before the soldiers can react, I grasp the barrels of their rifles in my mechanical hands and pull the guns away from them. Then I squeeze my steel fingers together and crush the gun barrels. They crumple like cardboard in my hands.
Whoa. That’s pretty cool.
The soldiers retreat to the other side of the lab, their hearts pounding. At the same time, I drop the rifles and hold my arms straight in front of me, as if measuring the distance to the door. I clench my mechanical hands into fists, then thrust them forward like battering rams. The door buckles on impact and falls off its broken hinges.
Yes! This feels good!
I step into an anteroom crowded with higher-ranking soldiers. They’re facing a large video screen that shows the lab I just left. Until a moment ago, evidently, they were observing the progress of Dad’s experiment, but now all the captains and majors and colonels are stumbling over each other as they back away from me. Their faces glow brightly, hot with fear.
Looking past them, I see a second door standing open, revealing the corridor beyond. I turn toward it, but before I can take another clanging step, one of the soldiers strides forward and positions himself between me and the exit. It’s General Hawke. His face is stern and his heartbeat is steady.
“Armstrong!” he shouts, pointing at the broken door behind me. “Get back in the lab!”
I feel an urge to laugh, but my speech synthesizer doesn’t recognize this command, so no sound comes out of my speakers. Hawke is unarmed, and I outweigh him by about five hundred pounds. Still, he takes a step toward me, coming within three feet of my torso.
“Now, Armstrong!” He points at the camera on my turret. “You signed an agreement, remember? You’re a soldier now, like everyone else here. And that means you have to follow my orders.”
Again, I want to laugh. What’s Hawke going to do, court-martial me? Slap a pair of handcuffs on my steel wrists and put me on trial? I’d love to see him argue his case in front of a judge. Yes, your Honor, we killed the defendant, and now his mind belongs to the Army.
I’m just about to extend my arms and shove Hawke out of the way when my father comes to the general’s side. Dad’s pulse is racing. “Listen to the general, Adam! Your systems still need calibration. You’ll damage your circuitry if you run off like this!”
I focus on Dad’s anxious face, comparing it with the 657 images of him in my memory. I want to say I still love him, but how can I be sure? Maybe love is in one of the files I lost. Maybe I have nothing but anger now. I turn my turret away from him and point my camera at General Hawke. I adjust the sound level of my speakers, raising the volume high enough to make the walls rattle. “WHERE IS IT?”
Hawke doesn’t flinch. “Where’s what?”
“YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! WHERE IS IT?”
He says nothing, but I detect a slight pause in his heartbeat, and at the same moment his eyes flick to the left. Now I know where to go. In one swift motion, I sidestep General Hawke and my father. Then I march through the doorway and go down the corridor, heading in the direction that Hawke indicated. Dad yells, “Adam!” but I ignore him.
After five seconds the video feed from my camera matches a set of images in my memory. I’m striding down the same corridor I saw forty-three minutes ago when the Army doctors pushed me on the gurney toward the operating room. I made no special effort at the time to memorize the layout of this level of Pioneer Base, but now I have total recall of everything I saw just before the procedure. I can view every twist and turn of the corridor in my memory, and I can use this mental map to guide me to my destination.
My acoustic sensors pick up the sound of distant footsteps—more soldiers are coming to intercept me—so I increase my velocity. The corridor echoes with the clang-clang-clang of my footpads.
After another ten seconds I reach the operating room. The door is locked shut, but I smash it open. I stop short when I see the scanner again—the image triggers a rush of fear in my circuits—but I force myself to approach the stretcherlike table that extends from the scanner’s wide, central hole. Then I point my camera downward and stare at the corpse of Adam Armstrong.
I try to keep my feelings at bay by concentrating on the physical details. The corpse’s head is still locked in the stereotactic frame, carefully positioned within the scanner’s hole. Although the face matches the images of Adam Armstrong in my memory, what I notice now are the differences. The skin is yellowish, the color of old newspaper. The mouth is open and the lips are dry and cracked. The eyes are open too, but the eyeballs are coated with a jellylike film.
Despite my best efforts, I get angry again. They were in such a rush to transfer my mind that they just left my body here! As if it was worthless! I suppose they would’ve eventually come back for the corpse and given it a proper burial, but the abandonment still seems wrong. This body isn’t worthless. Until an hour ago, it was me.
I stretch my arms toward the corpse, intending to pick it up. At the same time, I turn on the tactile sensors that are embedded in the tips of my steel fingers. These sensors measure temperature, pressure, and moisture to determine the best grip for holding an object. But instead of grasping the body, I extend my right hand and lightly touch its face. My fingertips brush its cheek, which is cold and dry. Then I shift the mechanical hand a few inches and sweep it over the eyelids, closing them. As I do this, the anger fades from my circuits. I feel only a sense of emptiness. I’ve lost the best part of me. I’ve lost it forever.
It seems like I stand there beside my corpse for ages, but in reality I’m alone in the room for only thirteen seconds. A dozen soldiers come running through the doorway and take positions around me. Some are armed with rifles, others with pistols. A moment later, my dad follows them into the room and heads straight for me, ignoring all the soldiers and their guns. He doesn’t order me to go back to the lab. He doesn’t say a word. He simply rests one hand on the body of his son and the other on my torso.
I pivot my camera toward him. He’s crying again. He wanted to save me, but now he’s not sure if he did the right thing. I’m not sure either. But I know one thing for certain: I still love my father. The emotion floods my circuits. I love him no matter what he’s done to me.
I point a steel finger at my corpse but keep my camera trained on Dad. “Can we save some of my DNA?” I ask. “Just in case…I mean…”
Dad nods. “Of course. Just in case.”