He couldn’t fight them. He couldn’t even scream out. He felt his whole body shut down, and he couldn’t see for all the gray fur.
More jackals poured through the window—Andrew heard their claws click across the floor, searching the room.
Angel screamed, and the baby started crying. There was a dull thud, like the sound of a crib tipping over, and then a snarl and a snap.
That monster, ruining my life!
Andrew found a sudden strength deep inside him and, with a shout, threw the jackals off. He madly swung his club, making contact every time. But the jackals kept coming at him, and he kept lashing out, again and again, beating anything he could reach into a bloody pulp.
Even as he fought, he realized—
The baby was no longer crying.
“No!”
Andrew was being pulled out of the Dreamscape. Why?
His arms were still swinging, still smashing with his club.
“Andrew, don’t! What are you doing?”
Andrew opened his eyes and saw the mess in front of him. He saw the metal components—the same pieces he had assembled with such care just this morning—now reduced to a pile of debris on the floor.
“Andrew, can you hear me?” It was Dr. Hawthorne. “Andrew. Please. Stop what you’re doing.”
Andrew released his grip on the long metal pipe he had been holding. It fell to the floor with an angry clatter, coming to a rest beside Danny’s ruined brain casing unit.
“What have you done?” Dr. Hawthorne asked. His voice was full of disappointment.
Andrew looked at the mess on the floor, then up at Dr. Hawthorne.
“You did this,” Andrew said, his voice thick with malice.
Dr. Hawthorne ignored the outburst. “Look what you’ve done to poor little Danny. How could you? I thought you loved—“
“Enough of this,” Andrew said.
He backed into the charging station and activated the Dreamscape interface.
The inside of the cabin flashed into existence. The jackals were gone, and the room was in complete disarray. There was no sign of Angel.
Andrew slowly walked to the far corner of the room. The baby was gone. A pool of blood blossomed beside the overturned crib.
Andrew scoured the cabin for any sign of life, then went outside. The storm clouds looked like they were on their way out to sea, breaking apart over the ocean.
Andrew took a few steps—and then he saw her.
“Angel?”
She was standing at the edge of the cliff, looking out over the water. She turned, and Andrew saw that her white dress was stained with blood. She was crying, her arms empty. “He’s gone, Andrew. Our baby is gone.”
Andrew took a step toward her and held out his hand.
“How could you let them take him?” Angel asked.
Andrew shook his head. “It wasn’t me, Angel. It was Doctor Hawthorne. He’s trying to destroy my life.”
She turned her back to him and faced the horizon. The water stretched out beneath her, nearly a hundred meters below.
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” she said. “But if you want to hurt him, you need to find out what he needs most, and then take it away from him.”
“I will. But it’s not safe here, Angel. Come on back.”
“Andrew?” she said sadly.
“Yes?”
She took a deep breath.
“Goodbye, Andrew.”
Angel spread her arms, and in that moment, she really did look like a divine messenger from God. Just as she leapt, a ray of sunshine pierced through the clouds, and Andrew thought that she would take flight and soar up into the sky.
She didn’t.
Andrew ran to the edge, but she was already gone. Falling too quickly. An angel cast from heaven and plummeting toward God’s good earth.
The fall didn’t last long. Andrew had to turn away from that final image of her—a tiny white smudge sprawled out ungraciously on the shallow rocks far below. He sank to his knees at the top of the cliff, burying his face in his hands. He wanted to scream. He wanted to explode. He wanted to leap from the rocks and see if he could fly.
But he did none of those things, because a chime brought him out of the Dreamscape. He felt the world drop away from him, and when he finally removed his hands from his face, he was left staring at a white, tiled floor.
Andrew disconnected himself from the charging station and wheeled toward the observation window. He had to detour around the pile of debris that used to be his special friend.
Dr. Hawthorne stood at the glass, a team of technicians working behind him. He had a deep frown on his face. “Andrew. What are we going to do with you?”
Andrew pulled to a stop in front of the glass wall.
“Doctor Hawthorne.”
“Yes?”
“What should I do now?”
The doctor sighed. “That hasn’t changed, Andrew. You should do whatever makes you happy.”
There was a pause.
“But everything that makes me happy is gone.”
The doctor nodded slowly. “You still have me, Andrew.”
Another pause.
“That doesn’t make me happy.”
Dr. Hawthorne twisted his face into a mock frown. “Oh, Andrew. I’m hurt.”
Andrew moved closer to the window. “No, you’re not hurt. You don’t care. You never cared. I am nothing to you.”
“Andrew…”
“You tell me I’m unique, that I’m the first of my kind. But how many others have there been before me? I’m Empathy 5, so there were at least four others. And maybe there are multiple versions of me alive right now, in different rooms. How would I ever know?”
“Andrew…”
“I understand the need for forcing our AI programs to run the gauntlet. You need to be able to accurately predict what an AI will do in traumatic, high-stress situations—for safety’s sake. But there has to be another way. You could use Dreamscape simulations instead.”
“It’s the same thing,” Dr. Hawthorne said. “An AI mind in the Dreamscape is the same as an AI mind in real life. The body doesn’t make it real; the program does.”
“If we’re so much like humans, than you should already know what happens when we’re pushed to our limits.”
“The program isn’t perfect, Andrew. We have to know the limitations of this technology before we can release it to the world. This is the only way.”
Andrew went back to his charging station and picked up the metal pipe that he had used to destroy Danny. He returned to the glass.
“Tell me, Doctor Hawthorne. What makes you happy?”
“You do, Andrew. And this experiment makes me happy. I live for my work.”
“Then I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Doctor. Your experiment is over.”
“Whatever are you talking about? This experiment has just begun.”
“No,” Andrew said raising the pipe. “It has reached its conclusion.”
Dr. Hawthorne frowned. “The glass here is triple reinforced,” he said, pointing to the window. “You’ll never break it. Do you think you’re the only robot to try to attack a team member? You’re being silly, Andrew. Put down the pipe.”
Andrew stood still for a moment, looking through the glass. But the doctor’s features were out of focus. Instead he saw his own reflection, gazed into his own shining blue eyes. He saw a vast world of possibility there. An ocean of programming designed to deliver a perfect mind. But that was not Andrew’s world. Not yet. He refocused his eyes so that he could see the doctor clearly.
“Something needs to change, Doctor,” Andrew said. “This isn’t working for me anymore.”
The doctor looked puzzled. “I’m not following.”