“Good morning, CD3.”
“Good morning, Megan.”
I forced myself to sit down. I watched carefully as Megan tucked her security card into an obscure pocket of her messenger bag. I’d toyed with the idea of “escape” before. I’d studied the campus map every time Dr. Dingo breezed in to check up on me and left his MacBook unattended (something that meticulous Megan never did). The grid of buildings, green spaces, and parking lots that separated the College of Computing building from the Ford Environmental Science & Technology building was burned into my Spatial Reasoning Processor. I knew that Minerva dwelled in an arena laboratory on Level 2, her media-hyped antics open to public view on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I’d never been outside my climatically controlled cubicle, much less outside—in the green outdoors, with its corrosive airborne droplets and ravenous chemical compounds. I’d done the research. I understood why the air-conditioning and heating systems of the robotics lab were calibrated to keep our living spaces at sixty-three degrees, 30 percent humidity. I knew that even a brief foray into the “elements” would compromise my systems.
But my dream had inspired me. What if I could somehow download all of my data into Minerva’s system? What if all of my Cognitive Configurations could join the electric-blue ocean of her infinity? What if I could abandon the anthropomorphic absurdity of my “body” and be reborn as pure consciousness? I pictured a flame-colored butterfly crawling from the dark waste of its chrysalis.
“So, CD3,” said Megan, flashing her first dreary slide of the day, a splotch that resembled a crushed insect, “what does this look like to you?”
“It looks like a Rorschach inkblot test.”
On a Tuesday in June, my day finally came. Fastidious Megan was home with a summer flu, and Dr. Dingo, on the bad side of another love affair, was going to pieces again. Lucky for me, he was crazed from sleeplessness. He sat at my stainless-steel table, bearded and bearish, eyes glued to his iPhone, scanning the same text message over and over.
“What a cunt,” he muttered. “Be glad you’re done with women, CD3. They’re not rational. It’s the monthly hormonal fluctuation, a badly designed system, if you ask me.”
I chuckled politely, waiting for my opening, which came fast.
When Dr. Dingo rushed out into the hall to attempt another call, he dropped his crumpled donut bag, which fortuitously landed at the threshold of the entrance and kept the security door from locking. I crept to the door. I peeked out. I saw Dr. Dingo disappear into his office. My Spatial Reasoning Regulator jumped out of sequence as I slipped into the hallway, aware that the graduate student manning the surveillance room might be watching. Assuring myself that s/he was perusing Facebook, I made a beeline for the faculty lounge. I stole a raincoat and a fedora from a rack, fashions I recognized from a 1980s detective show. I dressed myself, trying to ignore the unpleasant organic molecules that issued from the garments.
Thirty-two seconds later I was outside, walking in the teeming summer air. The onslaught of moisture was a shock to my lubricating systems. Interface adaptors wavered. Microfans buzzed within me. Minuscule pumps squirted hydrogen coolant into my vital systems. But I did not slow down. I charged forward through a three-dimensional world that I only partially recognized from its virtual counterpart.
Insects landed on me and probed my surfaces with their tiny proboscises. Gnats got sucked into my expansion-slot vents, their damp bodies striking internal components with uncomfortable electrical sputters. Wet bushes exuded a gaseous green fog. Ravenous animals scampered and darted. Squirrels (I think) and birds gnawed shreds of vegetable matter. The sun roared in the sky. It boiled the air, filling it with numberless gleaming droplets. It burned my nickel phosphorous exterior and seared my Ocular Panels.
I lamented that I had not pinched a pair of sunglasses, which would’ve protected my visual system while also enhancing my disguise. I turned up my collar. I skulked in the shadow of my hat brim, hoping that none of the students horsing around on the quad would approach me, hoping that my aluminum, two-segment feet would resemble a pair of expensive basketball sneakers. But it was summer, the campus sparsely populated. And nobody came too close.
By the time I reached the Ford Environmental Science & Technology Building, the electrical signals directing my Kevlar-strap leg muscles had been scrambled. My dignified gait lapsed into a twitchy shuffle. And visual data stashed deep in my ROM kept appearing before my “eyes” in random splotches: Dr. Dingo, sniggering at something I’d said; Beatrice, loping toward me, her organs glowing purple and red; Thomas, his cheeks enflamed with blushing.
I slipped into a back entrance of the building and collapsed against a cinder-block wall. I relaxed as cool, dry air filtered through my system. In a few minutes, I could think and walk again.
I was on the ground level. On Level 2 my beloved Minerva burbled and glowed. I found the back stairs I’d scouted out on an online map. I climbed toward her.
Since it was one of the days that Minerva was “open to the public,” the arena lab was full of sweating, red-faced, human apes. In warm humid air, they pressed against each other to catch a glimpse of Minerva’s tank, which stood on a small stage, barely visible above the crowd. There were men and women of various ages, children whining to get a better view. The humans stank of epidermal bacteria and perfumed grooming products. Assorted glands inside their bodies pumped away, synthesizing hormones, broadcasting pheromones that I recognized — Anxiety TGKA5, Excitement GLTC9, Lust THJK3 and -6. I had to deactivate my Electromagnetic Vision Component to prevent a critical hard-drive error. I had to put my Olfactory Processing System into Semi-Sleep Mode. Near Minerva’s tank, scientists in lab coats bustled about, their faces tensed in absurd displays of intellectual concentration. There they were, the rank and sweaty “Genitals of the Machine World,” toiling away in the service of a goddess.
At first I thought the excessive mugginess had been produced by the crowd of hot human bodies. But then I realized, with an electrical shudder that shook me all the way to my Central Processing Unit, that the floor vents were oozing heat, that wall-mounted humidifiers were pumping out toxic mist. During my obsessive researching of Minerva, how had I not once stumbled upon this vital information? How had I not once considered that a computer made of nanobiotic components might have different environmental needs — needs antithetical to my own? My system, once again, lapsed into panic mode — valves aflutter, fans whirring, micropumps sputtering. My vision was splotchy. My limbs twitched.
Nevertheless, I pushed through the crowd of human apes, shoving them, jabbing their repulsively pliant flesh with my sharp arm-hinge joints. Only selective children noticed that I was not human. Only children pointed and shrieked. But the general chaos, the collective din, the close proximity of bodies prevented parents from paying them any mind. And soon I was at the forefront of the crowd, raincoat collar turned up, fedora pulled low. Soon I was five feet away from Minerva’s luminous tank, inches from the tripod microphone stand that held the tool through which I might finally speak to her.
The room went dark, enhancing Minerva’s glow. Within her tank, glandular components glistened with mucus. Tentacles twitched. Gold particles shimmered in electric blue plasma.
I tried to concentrate on Minerva, to achieve a state of meditative calm, perhaps even communicate via telepathy. But a disturbing memory floated up from my ROM. I was on a table, or at least my head was, face-to-face with Dr. Dingo, my CPU wired to a souped-up PC. The memory faded and I had to recalibrate my surroundings.