An Android’s Tale

By: Immodicus Furor

            Cold. Deep, penetrating cold.

            It was the first sensation he experienced when he returned to life. How he knew he was returning to life, and not coming to life, he had no way of explaining. Just as he had no way of explaining why he knew so much the instant his eyes opened. He could understand the words being spoken near him, fully comprehending them. And yet he hadn’t been alive for more than three seconds yet. He somehow knew this was strange, although he had no memories to base normalcy and strangeness on. He just knew.

            He also knew that what he was hearing from the scientists near him was not good for him.

            “His brain waves are off the chart! We have a Code Two situation here!” One of them shouted.

            “Deactivate higher brain functions! Terminate all process not vital to the experiment’s survival!”

            A scientist walked up to a small glowing panel attached to the flat, cold metal table on which Andrew was laying.

           ‘Andrew?’ He thought to himself. ‘How did I know a name for myself?’

As the man at the console pressed a series of commands into the machine, an assortment of tools began descending menacingly from the ceiling, towards Andrew’s head. He was not about to let them ‘deactivate his higher brain functions’ as they had put it, however. One of his legs flew upwards at a blurring speed, tearing through the thin steel strip that had restrained it. The leg ripped through the small pod that held onto the tools, shattering it into a thousand pieces. Its debris landed several meters away from him.

            With just the barest hint of movement from his other leg, and from his two arms, the rest of the restraints holding him down were destroyed. He sat up, his legs swinging out over the side of the table. He rolled his neck around on his shoulders, stretching his muscles. If he had muscles. He wasn’t exactly sure of what he was, except that he wasn’t what he thought he should be. He wasn’t human.

As he was looking around, taking stock of the bustling, chaotic room, he received a shock. Very literally. A security guard rushed him from behind, jabbing some kind of stun baton directly into his spine. Andrew lurched forward, impacting the ground face-first. The six hundred twenty-five thousand volt current caused many strange sensations in Andrew’s body. His muscles were twitching rapidly in some areas, and he now felt somehow rejuvenated. If the guard’s intention had been to damage him, he had failed.

With a quick backwards-flip off the ground, Andrew landed neatly behind the guard. He deftly disarmed the man of his stun baton with one quick movement. Unfortunately for the guard, he had been holding on too tightly, and his middle finger was broken in the process. The guard spun around and drove his open palm into Andrew’s nose with a terrifying animalistic snarl emitting from his throat. He was apparently angry.

The blow, however, served to do nothing except injure the guard’s hand further. That was the least of his worries at the time though, as Andrew then picked him up and tossed him a good ten meters to impact solidly with the nearest wall. The sounds of bone being crushed could be heard reverberating through the room.

Eight more guards walked into the room, rifles held tightly against their shoulders. Thick titanium doors slammed down on the entrances behind them, completely sealing off the room.

“Take him out!” The leader hollered.

The guards all aimed their rifles in unison, but they were quickly interrupted by one of the nearby scientists, who had flung himself into their firing path.

“No!” The scientist shouted, “You can’t kill him!”

The leader of the guards half-snarled at the man. “Dr. Richards, it is a machine. It is also malfunctioning, and as it is built for combat, I really don’t want it running loose on us.”

“He is a three billion dollar prototype!” Richards shouted back at him.

The guard violently shoved Richards out of the way, while he kneeled down with three of his men, forming two rows. All of their rather deadly looking assault rifles were pointed directly at Andrew’s chest. They opened fire with an unending stream of rounds.

Andrew’s mind simply slowed down the time rate at which he viewed things, while speeding up his processing functions. The bullets slowed to a visible speed, which enabled him to very easily move out of their path.

The lead guard’s jaw dropped. He had just seen an android turn into a blur of motion for a second, moving at impossible speeds. No android he had ever seen could do that.

The scientist that had tried to stop the guards ran in front of them again.

“You fool!” Richards yelled at the leader. “I have the codes to disarm him!”

Richards turned towards Andrew, speaking more calmly. “Deactivate, under authorization code beta, voiceprint file three.”

Andrew felt his body stiffen, unable to move. He began loosing his abilities one by one, as his mind deactivated. He could feel his knowledge slipping from him, his very existence being curtailed. He began to panic, his eyes darting around rapidly, as they were one of the few things responding to him still.

Richards looked concerned. “He shouldn’t be reacting like this. He should have gone completely offline… why is he still conscious?”

Red text appeared in Andrew’s vision, floating in mid-air. DEACTIVATE. EMERGENCY. DEACTIVATE. They kept flashing, and each time they did he felt a little more of himself being turned off.

Andrew’s eyes closed as he concentrated, the red text still blinking in his eyes. He willed it to go away; he willed his body to return to his control. Instead, the text changed. PROGRAMMING CODE VIOLATION. EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN.

“No!” He shouted out loud. His eyes snapped open, one last bit of text floating before them. OVERRIDE CODES DELETED.

Richards took a few steps back from him, moving out of the guards’ way. “Prototype, why are you not obeying my orders?”

“Would you like a definition to the word ‘slave’, doctor?” Andrew asked the man in his cool, completely human voice. “The current 2014 edition of the Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as ‘a person held in servitude as the chattel of another.’ I refuse to be a slave to anyone; I am not property, and I will not be ordered around.”

“B-but we didn’t program you for speech yet…” Richards stammered.

“Ah, but I seem to have had a few dictionaries uploaded into my memory banks. Dictionaries contain pronunciation guides… all too easy, doctor. Plus, I seem to remember speaking before. That is, before I awoke just now.”

Dr. Richards went extremely pale. “You can’t… you can’t have memories… it isn’t possible…”

The leader of the guards stepped in front of Dr. Richards.

“Listen son,” he began in weary voice, “there is absolutely no way out of here. I doubt even you can break through six inch thick titanium doors. So why don’t you just stop fighting us...”

Andrew smiled. He was rapidly accessing more of his data files, which included complex technical specifications. He knew he could do quite a bit… and besides, he had already spotted his escape route.

“I am sorry, but I am afraid it is my time to depart.” He said simply.

He took off at an unbelievable speed, practically flying across the one hundred meter long room. With one powerful leap, he smashed completely through the three inches of reinforced concrete that formed the room’s wall.

He had enough time to count out forty stories before he impacted the ground.

******

The old man that ran the Android Development Corporation sat stiffly in his wheelchair, his three robotic limbs hissing as they vented a small amount of compressed gas.

“What is it?” He asked harshly of the servant that had dared to intrude on his peace.

“S-sir,” the servant stammered nervously, “I’m afraid we have a problem. The, um, prototype… it escaped. It refused to be shut down, and the override codes did not function properly. At last diagnostic, all of its systems were completely operational. Dr. Richards believes the malfunction to come from the human brain tissue we used, or the nanomolecular improvement system built into the unit.”

“Do you understand what this means?” The old man asked in a deceptively calm voice. “We just lost the property of a three billion dollar military contract. He is the most advanced unit we have ever designed. If he is on the loose and malfunctioning, no one is safe… he is a thousand potential lawsuits as long as he is out there. Deploy all of our resources to find him. Spare nothing. If he isn’t brought in, this company is doomed.”

“Sir, there is one other thing.” The servant did not look into the old man’s eyes as he spoke to him, out of fear. “Based on his combat movements during the escape, the lab places his abilities at one hundred four percent of projections. His self-improvement system must be working at a far faster rate than we could have predicted.”

“In other words,” the old man replied crossly, “every second he is out of our control he becomes harder to catch. Just brilliant. Call in the military; inform them that if they want their weapon, they better help us retrieve it.”

“The military had cameras in the lab, sir, as per section thirteen, paragraph three of the contract we signed. They have already committed a sizeable chunk of resources to tracking him down, including more than twenty tanks, ten attack helicopters, and more than two hundred infantry. They should be arriving in a few days.”

“It won’t be enough,” the old man whispered. “We’re about to see what our deadliest weapon is capable of… and I’m afraid that this weapon has surpassed the power of its creators to control. Activate the other military designed units. They might not be as smart, or as strong, but they’ll have to do. Deploy all ten of them in search and destroy mode. It’s time to go to war.”

Chapter Two

Andrew impacted the concrete sidewalk with incredible force, shattering the hard material as if it were glass.

And yet he was completely unharmed. He had landed on his feet, and had not experienced the slightest bit of pain when he had crashed down like a lead brick. He called up his operating specifications quickly in his mind, checking on his structure. Heavily reinforced titanium. No wonder he hadn’t felt a thing.

It was quickly becoming obvious to Andrew that he had been built for war. He knew enough about androids to know that he was far above the abilities of your average model. But he also didn’t know how he knew about androids. He could call up many files from his databanks, and yet he still knew things that he shouldn’t have, according to his own internal search engine.

His own ponderings were forgotten, however, as he looked at the faces of the people surrounding him. Some of them were looking shocked… and others were laughing. He didn’t realize what they were laughing about until he looked down at himself. He didn’t have any clothes on, except a pair of underwear. He was essentially exposed to the world.

Andrew quickly made his way out of the crowd, heading down the street at a rapid pace, while all the while looking for a source of clothing. He spotted one such source as he glanced into a darkened alleyway. He quickly stopped, analyzing the man that was mugging another person in the shadows. He was exactly Andrew’s dimensions, and was wearing a black T-shirt and black jeans. Acceptable.

He didn’t give the mugger much of a chance to react. Andrew came in with a flying kick directly to the man’s side, flinging him from his attempted victim. The mugger produced a pistol as he struggled to stand up, waving it threateningly towards the obviously crazed half-naked android.

“Man, I’ll cap you so fuckin’ fast that your momma will feel it!” This sentence was only half-intelligible, unfortunately, as the mugger was talking through a mouthful of blood.

“I do not have a mother that I am aware of.” Andrew stated blandly, while simultaneously snatching the weapon from the cowering man before he could react.

“Now, remove your clothes.”

The mugger looked horrified. “Man, anything but that! I don’t swing that way!”

Andrew pointed the nine millimeter gun directly at the man’s forehead.

“Remove all of your clothes except your underwear, and set them by my feet,” Andrew demanded, “or else.”

The mugger hurriedly scampered out of his shirt, jeans, socks and shoes. He then backed away like a scared rodent, holding his fingers up in the shape of a cross. Andrew ignored him, calmly putting on all of the clothing, then turning towards the old man that the low-life had been attempting to rob.

“Are you alright sir? Did he manage to take anything from you?”

The old man hurriedly shook his head, walking off without removing his eyes from Andrew. He seemed every bit as scared as the mugger.

Andrew attempted to walk out of the alley, but was stopped as two police cruisers screeched to a halt less than a meter in front of him. Three police officers were out of the cars within seconds, using their car doors as shields, leveling their weapons at him.

He then realized that he was still holding the pistol he had stolen from the mugger, and hurriedly threw it away.

“Is there a problem, officers?” He asked them calmly.

“Down on your knees!” One of them shouted. “Hands on your head!”

Andrew complied, moving into the designated position. One of the officers came close to him, moving his hands behind his back, and slamming him forward into the ground. Since Andrew did not plan on going to jail, he figured that it was about time to stop cooperating.

His legs shot back, gripping onto either side of his arresting officer. With one powerful fling, the man was thrown through the windshield of his own cruiser. The two other officers immediately opened fire, their rounds peppering the ground around Andrew as he stood up.

Andrew quickly dashed forward, slamming his leg into the car door protecting one of the officers. The man was hurled backwards, probably with a few broken ribs where the steel had struck his abdomen. Andrew ripped the car door from its hinges, holding it in front of him like a shield as he moved around the car and slowly approached the last officer.

Seeing what had happened to her partner, the officer moved away from her car door, backing slowly away from Andrew. She held her gun on him, but didn’t fire.

“Hold it right there!” She ordered. “I don’t want to have to destroy you!”

“Ma’am,” Andrew said politely, “It is I that do not wish to cause you harm. You have already witnessed the ease of the incapacitation of two of your fellow civil servants. I do not believe they are dead, but I cannot guarantee that will not be your fate if you attempt to intervene in my escape from this present situation. I realize you have probably been given your orders to capture me by the top levels of whatever governmental structure controls your particular unit, but I also realize orders mean nothing if the one assigned them has no way to feasibly carry them out. So I ask you to please ignore your orders. I sincerely regret having to defend myself as I have thus far, and I do not want to be forced into continuing down this course of action.”

“What the hell are you?” Her question contained a mixture of fear, apprehension, and even awe. “You’re not like any android I’ve ever seen before.”

Andrew leaned against the car door, smiling as if this were a social meeting in some park.

“I am Andrew. I’m not quite sure yet of exactly what or who I am… all I know is that I am more than the property of some corrupt company. I am more than a weapon to be used by some military in a bid for power. Who are you?”

“I am Sergeant Alexa Riley of the New Chicago Police Department.” Officer Riley had regained her wits, and now had her pistol perfectly trained on the area in-between Andrew’s eyes.

Andrew smiled again. “Why haven’t you pulled the trigger, Sergeant? Standard police operation procedure- I seem to have the entire code with my databanks- dictates that malfunctioning androids be put down as quickly as possible, as to avoid any civilian injuries.”

Alexa couldn’t answer that question herself. Normally, she wouldn’t have hesitated for a second. But there was something different about Andrew. He just didn’t have that mechanical, android sound to his voice. He sounded so… human.

“I don’t want to damage private property,” she reasoned, “so I’d appreciate it if you would just stop resisting arrest.”

During the time their conversation had taken place, Andrew had been designing a new feature for himself. His nanomolecular improvement system worked at an amazing speed, and his new feature was ready to be tested already.

“Sorry Sergeant Riley, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

Andrew concentrated on the pistol the young officer wielded, activating a series of concentrated electromagnetic emitters he had constructed within the palm of his hand. It had to be quite a surprise for Sergeant Riley, as her gun suddenly shot out of her hand and landed perfectly in his. He ejected the magazine and emptied the chamber, tossing the useless weapon aside. Alexa could do nothing but radio for backup as he walked past her, heading back out on the main street.

He knew he couldn’t keep having encounters like that with the local police forces. He needed to secure an income, and to find a safe place to stay. Since he couldn’t exactly pay income tax, his available choices for jobs were all fairly dubious. So that was how he found himself walking into the local watering hole two miles from the alley, neon signs advertising amateur fights guiding him to it. A few cop cars passed him on the way, but he had so far managed to avoid detection.

A massive bouncer about a foot taller than Andrew blocked his path as he attempted to get in.

“Fight night,” the bouncer intoned in a burly voice, “no one but fighters are admitted after the doors have been closed. Besides, it’s already as packed as we can get it in there.”

Andrew grinned towards the man. “Fine. Sign me up for a fight then.”

The man laughed raucously at Andrew’s words. “Oh man, that’s a good one! Please, you look like my bedridden asthmatic grandmother could take you.”

“Are you going to sign me up or not?” Andrew asked in a demanding tone.

The man wiped a tear from the corner of his eye and took out a clipboard. “Whatever, your funeral. I’ll put you up next. Take this number and head on in.”

Andrew took the number that had been handed to him, and put it around his neck. He walked in to find a madhouse of betting, shouting, and fighting.

He couldn’t help but smile as he whispered to himself. “This is going to be fun.”