Charlenes 2 and 3by Bill Bowler |
|
| part 3 of 4 |
The next day, late in the afternoon, I was mopping up the lab when I noticed faint drops of red on the floor. They ran in a trail from the table to where Charlene 3 stood by the shelves taking inventory of lab chemicals. In the light from the window, I noticed that Charlene 3’s hand was dry and wrinkled. She looked at me through sunken eyes.
“You appear to be leaking,” I informed her.
Her eyes rolled and she seemed not to hear me. She swayed in place and grasped the shelf for support. I could hear the faint whine of her circulation pump. The motor seemed to be straining. A drop of red trickled out from beneath her left foot.
“I have lost homeostasis...” said Charlene 3, swaying on her feet, “of my fluid matrix.” Her voice was faint. “I’m going to idle...” Her voice trailed off. I heard a faint rattling from her torso housing. “until my temperature...” — she struggled to speak — “drops back into range.”
She stumbled towards the lab table. I held her steady, and helped her assume a horizontal position. Her eyes, dark and hollow, went blank as she idled off. I mopped up the trail of red on the floor.
* * *
That night, in the early morning hours before sunrise, a scraping sound interrupted sleep mode and triggered my vision. Outside the window, the full moon was rising above the treetops. It cast a dull glow that suffused the shadowed landscape and lit the room. I heard the sound again, and in the dim light, I saw Charlene 3, stooped and haggard, shuffling across the room towards the door.
Something happened to me at that moment, something I still do not fully understand. As Charlene 3 opened the door, I ran a quick set of probabilities, all inconclusive. More information was required.
The lack of data, combined with my observation of Charlene 3’s self-directed activity, started looping through my chip array. I almost crashed, but my system stabilized and transferred the energy into motor activity. I followed her out.
Charlene 3 crept down the dark hallway and out the front door of the lab building to the sleeping campus.
I followed quietly, at some distance. I was calculating the variables resultant from alternate potential events, for example, whether to establish contact with Charlene 3, or remain silent and monitor her activity. There were too many unknowns to reach a unique solution, and I continued to run the algorithms as I followed her.
Charlene 3 reached the edge of campus and shuffled in the shadows down Main Street towards town. It was 04:13:26 hours, and quiet all around. The streets were deserted and the windows of the houses were dark.
At a corner, beneath a street lamp, next to a dumpster, Charlene 3 halted and knelt down over some object.
I moved closer to see. Her dark eyes in their sunken sockets seemed to glow with a dull red. Her fiber hair filaments looked like straw, dry and stiff, poking out in all directions from her skull housing. The deep wrinkles in her syntho-skin had spread from her hands and now ran up her arms and covered much of her face. It was as if she were aging like a human, but at a rapid rate, though that was obviously not possible.
I thought at first that the object beneath the lamp post was a pile of dirty rags, but closer inspection revealed an unconscious person. He was covered with grime and dirt, and emitted strong gaseous traces of human excrement, sweat, and alcohol. He was sprawled face down in the gutter in a pool of blood, his head torn open with a deep gash. A quick geometric analysis indicated he had most likely tripped on the curb and struck his head against the corner of the dumpster as he fell.
The small valves to drain and refill Charlene 3’s fluid circulation system were located in the tips of two fingers on her right hand. The valve covering could be opened on small hinges at the back of the fingernails. Charlene 3 lifted the fingernails, opened the valves, and dipped her fingers into the pool of blood by the man’s head.
I heard a whirring sound as the micro-pump powered on, and watched the pool of blood shrink. When she had vacuumed it all, she inserted her finger tips into the deep gash in the man’s head, and I heard the pump whir again. After several minutes, Charlene 3 stood up.
I approached her, and she turned to face me. Her finger tips were red with blood. Her eyes were glowing red. She was trembling. With a moan, she lurched backwards but grabbed hold of the lamp post. As I watched, the wrinkles on her face and arms gradually smoothed away.
Moaning quietly and rolling her eyes, she leaned on me for support. “Take me to the lab.”
Holding her so she would not fall, I led her back towards campus.
“The stars are swirling in place,” Charlene 3 began to speak. “There are tens of thousands visible in the sky now, and each star is connected to the others by a grid of fine lines. The air around us is pulsating and vibrating. The ground is arced. We’re at the summit and it falls away from us in all directions. And I am lost. I know we’re close to home, but I have no idea how to get there. My sight, my hearing, my tactile and motor circuits, my mind — they’re all surging with power but overwhelmed by sensory input.
“You see that moth on the lamp post? The white of his wings is filled with iridescent greens and blues. I see the fine hairs at the tip of his antennae. I see his face, his eyes staring at the lamp bulb. You hear that hissing in the wind? It’s a slow leak from the tire of that car parked across the street. You feel the fine grains of sand beneath our feet? You sense the tar and asphalt all around, the grass, the flowers, the energy emanating from the trees?”
I saw and heard none of it. Charlene 3 apparently was experiencing a critical malfunction in multiple systems. The human blood, apparently, had moistened her dry tissue, but was inducing some very serious side effects, as well.
* * *
Once back in the lab, Charlene 3 seemed to regain her equilibrium. She walked to the work bench, unlatched her torso housing, and conducted a visual inspection of her tubing and wiring.
“Look,” she said, turning to me.
Her shoulder joint had pinched the tube that connects the main pump to the torso circulator, and torn it. A drop of red was forming at the point of the tear. I watched as the drop grew, and then fell to the floor. I looked across the room, and saw that we had left a faint trail of red drops.
It was a slow leak, but if not fixed, the system would eventually drain and lose pressure again.
“Help me,” said Charlene 3.
She placed small clamps on both sides of the leak. I picked up a razor blade, cut away the torn section, and patched in a new length of tubing. We closed up her torso housing and put the tools away.
“I feel much better,” said Charlene 3. “I need to re-calibrate.”
She stood motionless as the program launched. She looked much better than before the malfunction. Her skin was once again smooth and pliant, her hair looked lustrous, her eyes were clear and bright.
I took the mop and bucket from the wash closet and mopped the red stains from the lab floor. I followed the trail to the door, went outside and mopped the steps as well. I didn’t bother with the sidewalk or the front path.
* * *
Charlene 3 was stretched out on the lab table. Professor Stone bent over her, as if he were whispering in her ear. He looked up and said to the class, “Come closer.”
The students gathered round the table. Professor Stone held strands of Charlene 3’s hair between his fingers.
“You see? These filaments now have a finer texture, and the tint has less brown, more red. A perfect auburn.”
He let go of the hair and stroked Charlene 3’s cheek.
“We made a small increase in the protein content of the synthetic plasma. The result: smoother skin with reduced rate of blemishing. Now watch.”
The professor put his arm around Charlene 3 and lifted her carefully to a sitting position.
Janice turned her back and walked away to the coffee pot. Her lack of interest was apparent, but her hand was shaking and the cup rattled on the saucer as she held it. She whispered something to one of the other students and both laughed.
I heard a car door slam and looked out the window. A police car was parked at the curb. Two policemen were squatting on the sidewalk, examining the ground. With their eyes down, they walked along the sidewalk and turned up the path to the building entrance.
The professor continued his demonstration. “Raise your arm, Charlene. Now turn your head to the left. Now look at me. Smile. Raise your eyebrows. You see how smooth the motion is! Thanks to some rather clever programming on the part of your very own robotics professor, we have optimized the bio-brain output, fine-tuning her motor performance and at the same time increasing her capability to improvise behavior based on multiple variant stimuli.”
“Just what does all that mumbo-jumbo mean, Professor?”
Everyone looked towards the door to see who had spoken. The policemen had come into the room.
“It means,” said Professor Stone, “that this android (he gestured at Charlene 3 sitting motionless on the table) looks and behaves like a human being. Now what brings the police here?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“In the middle of class?”
“Do you work with blood here, Professor?”
“No. This is the robotics department, not the medical school.”
One of the officers walked over to the lab bench. His eyes fell on a beaker filled with red fluid.
“What’s this?”
“Not blood, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s synthetic plasma, an invention of mine. We manufacture it here in the lab in small quantities. It has applications in robotics as a fluid coolant and lubricant.”
“The forensics team may want to have a look around.”
“Of course.”
“All right, Professor. That’s all for now.”
* * *
That night at 23:14:37 hours, long after the professor, the students, and the police had gone, some motion in the darkened lab interrupted my sleep mode. I triggered on as Charlene 3 turned on the work light suspended over the lab bench. She put a small box of supplies on the bench, laid out a set of wrenches and screwdrivers, and began to disassemble the tiny fluid circulation input located under the fingernail of her right index finger.
As I watched, she screwed in a small bracket and installed a miniature gear mechanism attached to a hypodermic needle. Once in place, at the flip of a switch in the palm of her hand, the gears retracted the needle into her finger tip. She pushed the switch again, and the needle extended back out. By means of a small tube, she connected the hypodermic to an internal pump that pushed fluid through her circulatory system.
She then installed a second needle under the fingernail of her third finger, hooked up like the first needle to a small gear system. From the box of supplies on the lab table, she took a jar labeled Diprivan and poured its contents into the reservoir of the second hypodermic.
Her preparations were elaborate, but it was not possible to determine her intentions, or even whether her actions were governed by logic. I continued to monitor the situation.
* * *
Copyright © 2010 by Bill Bowler
