Part 1: “The Odd Couple Is a Null Program in Binary”

Mystic Ghost

A Story by Jay Seals

Sam’s and Janus’ Story or “The Odd Couple Is a Null Program in Binary”:

Sam Dimmons, a robotics engineer of small repute, is closing down his shop; a hole-in-the-wall closet called “Re-Bots” inside a San Francisco mini-mall. He’s had a successful day, all things considered. Two droids (a coffee machine that insisted on making nothing but hot cocoa and a cleaning bot that kept shocking its owner for no apparent reason) had been brought into his shop early in the day and he’d already repaired them. Tomorrow morning the customer will come in and pay him cash, which is something he sees less and less of these days. Sam likes cash. As a businessman, any form of payment is of course accepted, but cash lends a certain sort of reality to money that Sam just doesn’t get from credit chips. Being a man of simple means and dreams, Sam appreciates simple things like cash. He can hardly wait to feel the money in his hands tomorrow. As he surveys his shop before turning off the lights, his computer chimes. He has a message waiting for him. He crosses the tiny lobby, worms his way around the counter to his computer terminal and opens the mail. It’s from Star Net.

Sam assumes that it’s junk mail or a mass mailer that found its way to his account until he reads the header. It names him specifically. Reading down a little further, he sees that they want to hire him for something, which boggles his mind. Even more mind-boggling is that there are spelling errors throughout the message, but Sam chooses to ignore the gaffe. Star Net is a major corporation while Sam is nobody. What in the hell does Star Net want with him? They don’t say in the message; just that they want to hire him for a special job that only he can do. Sam racks his brain, trying to figure out what it is that only he can do and draws a blank. Surely Star Net has an army of robotics engineers, if not editors. Sam does good work for his customers and has created a small niche for himself in the San Francisco area, but he doesn’t fool himself into thinking that he’s the best at anything. There are literally hundreds of other bot mechs who are much better than he is. Star Net would get better results by hiring them. Having sufficiently deduced that Star Net must have made a mistake in sending him the message, Sam deletes it. If they really do want him for something, they’ll call. He thinks nothing more of it, tells his computer to shut down and goes home to Janus, his patchwork house bot.

He worked hard today, in his opinion. He deserves to go home to some peace and quiet, maybe watch his new goldfish or the Relaxation Channel and go to sleep early.

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“I don’t care how much you beg, you aren’t getting your arm back,” Sam says with a heartfelt glare in his eyes.

Janus, an entity much larger than a simple bot but slightly shorter than Sam, blinks metallic eyelids at his master with a quiet clicking noise and emits a synthetic whine. “But I didn’t mean to kill him,” Janus pleads. The droid holds out its remaining arm in supplication to Sam.

Sam shakes the robotic arm at Janus accusingly. “Don’t give me that! This is the third fish in a year that you’ve ‘accidentally’ killed. You’re taking bio-envy too far, dammit. Do it again and I turn you into a toaster oven,” he says, his voice dripping with menace.

Janus cringes, his motor servos squealing as he takes an awkward step back. The previous week, when he’d reprogrammed the refrigerator to sing the H.M.S. Pinafore continuously and forgot to reset the preferences before Sam got home, Sam punished the droid by shutting off its joint-maintenance software. “Oh, please sir!” Janus wails with a tinny voice. “Anything but that! I swear that I’ll be more careful!”

“That’s what you said last week,” Sam counters.

“And I meant it, too, sir.”

Sam scowls. “I heard the fridge again last night in my sleep. I thought I told you it was off limits.”

Janus sulks. He’s been caught. “Yes, sir. But…”

“But what?”

“Well, sir, it’s just that the fridge has such a better voice than I do.” The droid pauses, realizing that the conversation is turning away from the point of the matter, which is his arm. “I don’t want to be a toaster oven, sir. They’re so… small.”

If nothing else Janus knows the value of fear. Or, at least, he knows how to emulate it with a fair amount of precision. Sam doesn’t know how the droid learned fear, but he suspects that the television has something to do with it. Sam shakes his head at the droid. “Forget it,” he says. “It won’t happen again because I’m not getting another pet.” Sam lays the recently detached arm, the one that knocked over the fish bowl, back on the counter. “You’ve made it clear that pets aren’t welcome, so why bother?”

Janus doesn’t try to deny the point. It’s true. His solenoid face breaks into a grin as he quickly snatches his arm up and reattaches it. “Thank you, sir. Perhaps you are correct about the fish in that I am unable to handle them. Do you think a dog might be a better choice? I do understand your desire for biological companionship.”

“What? And run the risk of you bathing the carpets in canine blood?” Sam asks incredulously. “I can see it now, Janus. I’ll be away from work and the dog’ll piss on the carpet.” His voice changes to sound somewhat like the droid’s. “Ooooo! Bad doggie! Doggie needs a spanking… with a cleaver!” Sam’s voice returns to normal. “Thank you, Janus, but no. No more pets. Period.”

Janus shrugs. “If you say so, sir.” He moves his reclaimed arm at impossible angles to make sure it works correctly and then turns his metal head to Sam. “Thank you, sir. I don’t care what the dishwasher says, you’re a good master.” The dishwasher bleeps in denial and Janus ignores the complaint. “And fair. I truly am sorry about your fish. Sincerely.”

Sam waves off the apology. Of course Janus is sorry; he almost lost an arm over the incident. “It’s not like I had a chance to develop a relationship with it, Janus. Subject change: what’s for dinner?” Janus flinches in a way that only androids can and remains thoughtfully silent, looking fretful. "Well?” Sam prompts.

“My morality construct-“ (his what?) “-prohibits me from making the planned entrée for the evening. I think I should make another choice, sir.”

“What was it going to be?” Sam asks warily.

“Sushi.” Janus cringes again in expectation of having his other arm confiscated.

Sam chuckles quietly at the irony. “I’d say your morality construct, if you have one, is about the only thing that’s working properly. Can you whip up some pasta instead?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Three hundred varieties.”

Sam nods as he turns to leave the kitchen. “Surprise me,” he says over his shoulder.

“Very good, sir. Dinner shall be ready shortly. I will notify you.”

“You do that,” Sam says as the door closes behind him. Janus, fearful and clumsy- a bad combination of traits in any droid- is entirely reliable when it comes to meals. Sam knows that Janus will surprise him.

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Sam hears Janus busily cleaning the living room as he shoves another forkful of whirled peas into his mouth. Sam has gotten so used to being a bachelor that he doesn’t like having people (or androids) around while he’s eating, so he has Janus do odd jobs around the apartment while he enjoys dinner. Of course the android doesn’t mind because Janus finds the process of eating repugnant. For the life of him, Janus can not be made to understand why people don’t just plug into a wall socket for energy, despite Sam’s repeated explanation of the biological humanoid experience. Janus’ take on food consumption is that since food ends up being turned into the same type of energy, at its base level, that any electric device uses, people should find a way to adapt themselves. He believes that doing so would save time in refueling and keep humans cleaner (Janus calls the bathroom “That Place” because it repulses him so).

There is a chime as the doorbell sounds throughout the apartment. “I’ll get it!” Janus calls excitedly. He likes greeting guests since Sam receives so few of them.

Sam hears the android shuffle across the living room floor, bump into the coffee table in front of the sofa, mutter an apology to the table and continue to move his three hundred-pound chassis to the front door. Sam makes a mental note to reactivate Janus’ joint maintenance program. The barometric pressure in Sam’s weatherproofed apartment drops slightly as the front door swings open.

“Hello!” Janus says cheerfully. A muffled voice says something, then Janus says, “Oh, my” and falls to the floor. The sound of the fall is unmistakable as it shakes the small apartment like an earthquake. Janus says nothing else.

Then Sam hears the voice clearly say, “Find him.”

Sam starts to panic and then realizes that he has nowhere to go. The kitchen has only one door, which leads directly into the living room where Janus’ attackers are standing. Sam has no hope of escape and he still hasn’t seen his intruders. Defending himself with something as paltry as a kitchen knife seems senseless. Whoever is now in his apartment has managed to shut Janus down in less than two seconds. What sort of defense could a kitchen knife provide against someone so resourceful? Sam pushes his dinner plate away from himself and turns to the door in anticipation. Whatever comes through that door, Sam is determined to face it head on and with a calm demeanor.

The kitchen door slowly opens and a man pokes his head in cautiously. Sam looks back at the man expressionlessly. The strange man is huge. Truly, Sam can’t say how large the man is just by looking at his head, but with a skull so large (which is the size of a melon) it is a natural assumption. The ogre of a man confirms Sam’s assumption by stepping carefully into the kitchen and smiling. Sam mentally edits his assessment of the man. He is not just “huge”, he is massive. “Found ‘im, boss!” the stranger shouts in a gruff voice. “Don’t move,” he says to Sam.

Sam is so mortified by the sheer size of the man that moving is the last thing on his mind. What does come to mind, however, is an image of the poor woman who must have birthed that monstrosity. Sam wonders, remotely, if she survived and remains thoughtfully silent while the two of them wait for “boss.”

Boss casually steps in to join Sam and the large intruder in the small kitchen. The newcomer is a little shorter than Sam, wears a slim dark suit and smiles easily at Sam like a wolf. “Leave us, Angus,” he tells the large man.

“But-“

“Now.” Something in Boss’ tone inspires Angus to clear out quickly. Whoever “Boss” is, he quickly gains Sam’s respect. Angus is easily three times his size and heft. If the meaty thug is so inclined, he could probably snap the smaller man’s neck like a twig. But Angus doesn’t do anything of the kind. Instead, Angus practically runs out of the room like a frightened cat without another word. “Good evening, Samuel,” the intruder greets Sam warmly as though they’d known each other all their lives. Sam doesn’t respond and just sits back, staring at him blankly and wondering how he knows Sam’s name. Sam doesn’t have any enemies that he knows of, but engineers rarely do- except for other engineers, that is. “Allow me to introduce myself,” the man says. “My name is Artemis Bligh.”

Something from high school bubbles to the surface of Sam’s confused mind. “Like ‘Captain Bligh’?” Sam asks.

Bligh smiles in a way that makes Sam nervous. “Exactly so, Samuel. Exactly so. And like my fictional counterpart, I am not a man to trifle with.”

Sam believes him. “If I have, I’m sorry to hear about it,” Sam says truthfully. “What… brings you here?” He wants to ask about Janus, but decides that hospitality is something Bligh might appreciate more.

Bligh pulls a chair from the table and straddles it as though he owns it. “I’m a recruiter for my company. We have use of your skills in android technology.”

Sam blinks and then recalls the message from Star Net that he’d deleted earlier. “Star Net?” he asks. Bligh nods. “Oh. Well. I’m sorry I deleted that message now. But why didn’t you just come to my office or call me? I’d be happy to help, but this is a little… abrupt. I’m not used to entertaining… clients at my home, plus it seems like quite a drastic measure to come all the way out here just to offer me a job.”

“I’m very sorry if I’m intruding,” Bligh says. Sam has the feeling that he isn’t sorry about the intrusion at all, but accepts it with a nod. “But I do have need of your services. Somewhat urgently, I might add. When we didn’t get a response from you, we decided to come out and make a personal visit. That’s how much we need you. You could say that Star Net takes its recruitment process very seriously.”

Sam’s face clouds in confusion. “But what could Star Net need with me? I’m an engineer. Star Net probably has plenty of those to pick from.”

Bligh’s smile widens. “Come now, Samuel, if all we need is a simple mechanic do you honestly think we’d come to you? Certainly, we have hundreds of talented engineers on our payroll. What we don’t have is a specialist in android transference.”

Sam’s face falls and then he frowns. “That’s illegal,” he says. “I don’t do that.”

Bligh’s smile fades a touch. “Samuel, the law is the least of my concerns. My boss told me that I need to recruit someone with your skills and it’s my job to fill that requirement. Your name came up- more than once. It seems, Samuel, that you’re no stranger to the procedure. Am I right?”

Sam shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Listen, it was my mother, for Chissake! I couldn’t just-”

Bligh cuts him off. “The details are unimportant. What is important is that you can do it and you’ve just confirmed that. We’ll pay you handsomely, of course, but we need you now.” Angus’ laughter can be heard from the living room. He is watching a show on Sam’s TV. Bligh cranes his neck back and shouts, “Angus! Shut that trash off!” Then he looks at Sam. “Well?”

“I don’t know,” Sam hedges. “What if I don’t want to? What if GovDev finds out somehow? I’d be screwed.”

“Sometimes, Samuel, there are more dangerous people in this world than GovDev. If you refuse then your android will have fared far better than you tonight.”

Sam nods anxiously. Bligh’s point is painfully clear. Help him or else. “Or else” meaning a fate worse than that suffered by his late fish. “Not much choice,” Sam mutters.

Bligh’s cruel grin comes back. “Plenty of choice, Samuel. Angus can be quite entertaining when he tries to convince someone to our way of thinking. Shall I call him in?”

Sam blanches. “Not necessary to bother him,” he says hurriedly. “I’ll do it.”

“Angus!” Bligh calls out to Sam’s dread. Sam is about to assert that Angus isn’t needed when the behemoth lumbers into the kitchen. Bligh looks at him and then at Sam. “Lights out,” he says simply.

Sam thinks it an odd thing to say, but suddenly realizes what Bligh means when Angus rushes at him with a closed brick of a fist. The last thing Sam sees is Angus’ grim face and then it’s “lights out.”

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REBOOT SUBSYS: AI MATRIX
DESIGNATE: JANUS
STATUS: ONLINE
NOTICE: UNEXPECTED SHUTDOWN- SEE OWNER FOR DIAGNOSIS / REPAIR

“Master?” Janus calls out, his tinny voice just now coming online with the rest of his internal systems. There is no answer and he suddenly feels very odd. He runs a quick self-diagnostic and discovers that he is crumpled on the floor in front of the main entrance to Sam’s apartment. His internal clock re-synchronizes itself with the house chronometer. He has been inert for three hours before his self-activation program started up and rebooted his systems. Janus rights himself and calls out again for his master only to get the same response: nothing. Janus plays back his memory program to just before he went off-line. He sees his android arm opening up the front door and hears his own voice welcoming the visitors. Two men are standing in the doorway. One is tall and massive and the other is short and wiry. “Angus,” the small one says. “Right, boss,” the larger one (Angus?) says. The large stranger pulls out a small black device with a red button on it, presses it and then Janus hears himself say “Oh, my!” as static takes over the video playback. After that there is blackness. The unidentified guests apparently weren’t friendly. His diagnostic program finally decides that he was disabled by an electro-magnetic pulse of some sort, which overloaded his CPU actuator module.

Janus looks down and activates his spectral analysis vision, which is typically used when he cleans “That Place”, but can be used for all kinds of unexpected things. Janus sees that there are two distinct sets of footprints leading into and out of the apartment- but the larger set of outgoing prints seems more flattened out, mushroomed in a sense, which indicates that the larger man was carrying a heavier load than normal. Janus’ logic engine kicks into high gear and he realizes that Sam was carried out. Janus is now is alone, the android understands this immediately, but it is a different kind of alone that he has never known before. Sam is not merely at work, scheduled to come back home sometime around six at night; he has been forcibly removed from his residence.

Janus feels both angry and embarrassed to have been caught off guard so easily. His master is now in trouble because Janus wasn’t mindful enough to look through the door’s peephole. If he sees Sam again, Janus decides to ask his master for a retooling of his trust algorithm. The washing machine in the kitchen starts to beep like mad. Janus moves into the kitchen to investigate, half hoping to see Sam there alive and well. Sadly, Sam is not there, but the washing machine, a GE WashMaster 6000, is still ranting in binary code. “What is it?” Janus snaps at the machine crossly. The machine beeps some more, intermittently. “I know he’s gone, you idiot! Did you hear anything?” Some more beeps. “Well, don’t just sit there like a blender,” the blender protests some and Janus looks at it, “Shut up!” He returns his attention to the WashMaster. “Out with it,” he commands. The machine beeps a question. “I don’t care of you put it in iambic pentameter, just play back the conversation. Our master’s gone. If you break, who’s going to fix you?” Without further ado, the WashMaster plays back the conversation in a long string of binary, which takes considerably less time than the actual conversation. When it’s finished it asks if it should start washing the next load of dishes. “Sure,” Janus tells it. “But I might not be here when you’re done, so just hold it and wait.”

Janus moves back into the living room to think. Star Net is a major corporation. Portions of his own AI matrix were developed by Star Net, including the CPU actuator module which had been so easily disabled, but the bulk of his components and programming came from SynTech. Sam often joked that the android is the best of both worlds, forever at war with itself, but generally better than anything either company has put out on the market. Janus doesn’t watch the AI market all that closely, so he takes his master’s word at face value. The point is that Janus, as a singular entity and regardless of his sophistication, cannot hope to infiltrate Star Net by himself. Even if he could infiltrate Star Net, he doesn’t know where it is. He needs help, but more importantly, he needs information.

The android goes into Sam’s bedroom and does something he’s never done before: he logs onto the Net. Of course he knows all of Sam’s login codes because Sam consistently forgets them, but actually surfing on the Net is a new experience to Janus altogether. He decides that what he needs to know first is where Star Net’s headquarters is. If the company has abducted Sam, he is probably headed there.

Maybe.

Janus opens up a search engine and instructs it to get as much information on Star Net as possible. A few seconds later the search engine announces that it has literally hundreds of pages of information on the company. Most of it has to do with software and hardware announcements, but some of it is informational. The search engine also tells Janus that to view the official Star Net website, the user must own a pair of goggles. Janus scoffs at this requirement- he is an android and goggles are beneath him. He simply slips a built-in interface card right into a slot on Sam’s computer and tells the search engine to take him to the Star Net website. He is instantly transported to a virtual world, surrounded by visitors and window shoppers. Digital avatars float around him like ghosts and barely take notice of him. He approaches the information desk inside the Star Net Welcome Center.

A bot is sitting behind the desk and says, “Welcome to Star Net Industries’ official website! How may I help you?”

“I would like to know where you are located,” Janus says.

“By ‘you’ I infer you mean the actual company headquarters and not me specifically.”

“I do.”

“Very well,” the bot says cheerfully. “Star Net is located in Washington, DC, the heart of the nation’s capitol.” The bot gives a mailing address for customer queries and a physical address. “We have a real-life Visitor’s Center at our main factory where you can watch the production of some our newest products as it occurs. You can schedule a reservation for a tour of our facility with me. Transportation will have to be provided by you as well as accommodations once you arrive. The tour fee is thirty credits and it lasts approximately two hours. Would you like to schedule a tour with us Mister….” The bot’s E-Moticon software goes blank, making the bot’s facial features go slack. Janus is so unused to the Net that he thinks the bot has somehow malfunctioned.

“Hello?” Janus prompts the bot with concern. “Are you all right?”

The bot snaps back to attention. “I take it you are Janus, Mister Dimmons’ freak android,” it says with a different voice. The voice sounds exactly like Bligh’s, the smaller man standing next to Angus at Sam’s front door a few hours before. Janus quickly compares the voice pattern with the one in his memory banks and confirms his suspicion. The bot must have scanned Sam’s system, found out who it was registered to and notified Bligh, who took control of the bot immediately.

“I am not a freak,” Janus says archly and with indignation. “What have you done to my master?” he asks pointedly.

“Samuel is working for us on a special project. You need not look for him. He will be home when the job is complete.”

“You mean that illegal job?” Janus says menacingly. He knows, as well as Sam, that an android transference, the practice of placing a human intelligence into the body of an android, is a felony punishable by death.

The bot’s features are still functioning and interpret Bligh’s expression exactly. He looks surprised. “I thought we shut you down. There is no way you could have heard our conversation,” he says.

Janus nods. “You did, which annoys me to no end, Mister Bligh, but I had a talk with the washing machine and it had a lot to say. I am fully capable of reporting your company to GovDev for your illegal actions. Unless you return my master safely home, I will do so.” Janus surprises even himself. He has never talked to a human in this fashion and it feels astonishingly good.

“VIRUS ALERT! UNAUTHORIZED AI IN BUFFER!” Sam’s computer announces through its connection with Janus. Janus immediately disconnects from the system and runs another quick diagnostic to make sure he has not been infected with whatever it was that Bligh tried to force feed him. He looks down at the computer screen and notices smoke billowing out from behind it. The monitor goes static and then shuts down with a startling sense of finality. The computer controls the apartment’s communications with the outside world and since it is now dysfunctional, Janus will have to find another way of calling the police.

“How rude,” Janus says to the disconnected Mister Bligh.

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Sam wakes up with a sort of headache, but he can’t be sure because his hands are bound and he can’t reach up to feel his temples. All he can do is mentally note the dull throb in the general areas between his forehead and the back of his skull. He tries furtively to recall his last memory, but all that comes to him is the surprising image of a monstrous fist, an interesting kind of grin attached to a man that presumably was attached to the fist and then darkness. He decides to open his eyes, in the hopes that seeing something of note might jog his memory. No good. All he can see is dull gray walls and a chair. He is lying on a stripped flop mattress, which is actually more comfortable than his own bed. Engineers are not known for their creature comforts.

There is a door behind him, Sam sees as he cranes his neck around, and it is closed. There is a small square table sitting next to the door that is home to nothing but dust. Gamely, he asks for company. “Hello? Can anyone hear me?” he queries plaintively.

Nothing. He is alone. What’s worse is that those memories he was trying to regain moments before suddenly come back to him, like an avalanche. Bligh, Angus, Janus being shut down, being kidnapped by Star Net, the android transference… the whole nasty business comes back to him. He is awake, much to his dismay.

The door opens and Angus steps inside the small storage room where Bligh has elected to keep Sam until the engineer could wake up. Sam regards Angus with a bit of fear and uncertainty; he doesn’t want to be hit again by the large man. Angus notes the look of horror on Sam’s face and smiles kindly. “Sorry I hit you so hard,” Angus says conversationally. “I guess I was just a little annoyed at the boss for making me turn the TV off and I took it out on you. Normally, we’d just drug you, but we thought that a tranquilizer might mess with your head and we need you alert. You’ve been out for a lot longer than I expected, anyway, though. Nearly a full day. Guess you needed the rest, eh?”

Sam took this to be a mild form of concern for his safety. He couldn’t very well say, “Oh, no problem. I’ve been hit harder” because it would be utterly untrue. He’s never been hit so hard in all his life, even back when he was a scrawny kid in gradeschool. Instead, he just nods quietly at Angus and thinks about an appropriate response.

Angus sits down in the only chair in the room heavily. “So,” he starts, “How ‘bout it? Will you do it?”

“I assume you mean the transference,” Sam says.

“Yeah. You see, I only ask because you seem like an all right guy. I really don’t want to have to kill you or anything. Most engineers, when they meet Bligh, end up in tears. But you sucked it up and made the best of it. Kept your shit together. I respect that. For a geek, you’ve got brass. We don’t have many people like you around here. Only one that I can think of off the top of my head.”

Sam doesn’t know how he should take that. From one perspective, he had been dealt not one but two compliments from the man that had also, in the same breath, just threatened his life. “Thanks, I guess,” Sam says meekly. He sits up awkwardly, doing his best not to lose his balance, since his hands are still bound behind his back. “Say, listen, I’m awfully thirsty,” he announces.

Angus nods. “Yeah. We figured you would be. The boss will be here in a minute with stuff- food and a soda or something. Want me to take care of that for you?” he asks, indicating the bailing wire wrapped tightly around Sam’s wrists.

Sam smiles with relief. The restraints had been cutting off his circulation long before he’d woken up. Having his hands freed would please him immensely. Thoughts of escape or putting up a fight are nowhere near his conscious frame of mind right now. To even try would certainly earn him an early death at the massive hands of Angus. “Thanks.”

“Stand up and turn around,” Angus tells him. “And no funny stuff,” he adds brusquely.

Sam obeys quickly. He rises to his feet even more awkwardly than he did when he tried to sit up. When he’s finally on his feet, after a few unsuccessful attempts, he turns his back to Angus and says, “No funny stuff. I promise. Besides, what can I do? Bite your ankles to death? I’m an engineer, I’m not stupid.”

Angus chuckles as he unties the bindings. As they loosen up, he stands back and throws them in the corner of the room while he watches Sam wring his hands and wrists nervously. “I spoke with the boss. He wants me to tell you that your bot is looking for you.”

“Janus? He’s looking for me? I thought you guys shut him down.” Sam thinks about it for a second. “Oh. Yeah. Auxiliary systems must have kicked in. How do you know?”

“He logged into the Star Net website and asked the reception bot some questions. Bligh sent a virus to him, but we don’t think it got to him before he logged off. We want to know if there’s any way you know of to keep him off our backs.”

Sam knows of plenty of ways to keep Janus running around in circles, but he isn’t about to reveal them to anyone. He did, after all, create Janus from the ground up. If anyone knows how to stop the android, it’s Sam. But he wants to be rescued and if Janus is the one doing the rescuing, then Sam is perfectly happy to hear it. He doesn’t show any of this, though. Instead, he puts on the most apologetic face he can muster and says, “Sorry. There are some things even engineers can’t do. If he’s looking for me, he’ll probably find me. Part of his programming was pulled directly from a scrapped SecBot. Makes him a thorough household administrator, you see.”

Angus grunts unhappily and sighs as he sits back down in the chair. “We knew about the SecBot code you pulled from that CPU actuator module- we still have records of your order for it. How do you think we knew how to shut it down so easily?” He doesn’t bother to tell Sam that they also still have copies of the receipt; it isn’t relevant. “So. You can’t stop it. I figured as much,” he says and adds with resignation, “Well, then I guess we’ll just have to track him down ourselves and destroy him. Sorry, but we can’t have him snooping around and making a scene.”

Sam does his outright best not to sound upset by this. He put lots of money and time into getting Janus even remotely functional. The droid doesn’t always work perfectly, but when it comes to artificial companions, Janus is about the best that Sam could hope for. He doesn’t want to see his creation destroyed, if it can be helped. “I understand,” he says quietly and remorsefully. Now more than ever Sam would like to see Janus fail at one thing and one thing only: getting caught. The engineer knows that the chances of Janus actually rescuing him are slim, next to none. Star Net is a huge corporation with eyes and ears everywhere that Janus would likely think to look. The droid will probably be scrapped inside of a few hours, leaving Sam no better off than he already was.

“I’m not interrupting anything am I?” Bligh asks as he steps through the doorway with a to-go sack full of junk food and a container of soda. He sets these down on the small table next to the door, sending plumes of dust into the stale air, and regards Sam carefully. “Did you tell him about that droid of his?” he asks Angus.

“Yes, sir,” Angus reports. “He says he doesn’t know how to stop the thing. I’ll get a team to track it down. It won’t take long. I know some guys in the company who could track down a cheerleader’s panties faster than a homegrown jock. They’ll find it in no time.”

Bligh pats his subordinate supportively. “I’m glad to hear you’re so confident,” he says noncommittally. He then turns his attention to Sam. “So. Here we are. Are you ready to begin your work?”

Sam shrugs. He does not like Bligh. The fact that the small, skinny man has kidnapped him is a separate matter entirely from his dislike for him. If Sam had met him in a more social situation, Sam would still not like Bligh for all the tea in China. “I was wondering,” he begins, “I know that I really don’t have much of a choice in this and all and that I’ll be lucky to survive, but… I was wondering… is there any possible way to actually get something out of this aside from keeping my skin intact? Like money? Assuming I survive, of course, I’d like to, you know, go on a vacation when this is all over or something like that. Just get away from it all.”

Bligh smiles. “Oh, I completely understand. Yes. Sure. I’d be more than happy to make sure you get paid well for your work. Of course. How does, oh, a million sound? Assuming, as you say, you live long enough to spend it.”

Sam considers it carefully. A million credits is an awful lot of money, by anyone’s standards. He could live for quite a few years in the lap of luxury and build a dozen Januses before he needs to work again. And, upon further reflection, the work he’s about to perform for Star Net would be worth quite a princely sum of money. Then there’s the conditional hazard pay, due to the strange circumstances of getting the job in the first place. Not to mention the mental anguish he’s about to go through, having been kidnapped. “A million sounds just fine,” he says.

“Good, good,” Bligh says congenially. “We’ll post the money to your private bank account, don’t worry, we have the information, in a few days. Next we’ll close down your shop, which is already in the process of being broken into, by the way-“

“What?”

Bligh blinks. “Listen,” he says, “you can’t assume anyone would just think that you’ve gone and disappeared without some sort of reason, do you? Your shop gets broken into. You make a few phone calls, we have a few mimics that can reproduce your voice exactly, and close down the shop. A few days later, a rather large sum of money pops up in your account. Of course, the police will want to investigate and wonder where that money came from. They’ll expect the worst, as cops are wont to do in these cases. I should mention that we have many police departments in our pocket and they wouldn’t think of looking in our direction. It was actually a blessing in disguise that you deleted our message. No. You’ll be discovered to be just some engineer-gone-bad who found his way into an illegal software market and made a run for another country where such people are overlooked. The money will still be yours, of course, but you’ll be hard pressed to touch it for quite some time- statute of limitations and whatnot. Seven years, I should guess. You’ll be a very rich man indeed, Samuel. Yes. A million credits should be just about right. I’ll even make sure that it rounds off to the last cent.”

Sam just stands there, shocked to hear that this man is about to ruin his life on top of having already turned it upside down. “My shop?” he groans. “But I spent years on that place. I have regulars that depend on me. People I like that work around me. And you’re going to sick the cops on me, too? Why?” First the news about Janus’ impending destruction and now this. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to wake up. A small voice in the back of his mind speaks up, telling him that if he hadn’t performed an illegal android transference on his mother a few years ago, this wouldn’t be happening at all. If he had just let nature take its course, and his mother with it, then he would still be at home, happy, and getting ready for work in his hard-earned android shop. Sam mentally tells that quiet voice to shut up, in no uncertain terms, and to mind its own business.

Bligh shrugs indifferently. “It’s just business, Mister Dimmons. Our business. Now, back to the business at hand. Would you like to begin work immediately, take another… nap or would you like to take your chances in hand-to-hand combat with Angus? If you choose the last and happen to win, against massive odds in Angus’ favor, I promise to let you go without another word.”

Sam feels like he has to sit down, but the only chair in the room is still being occupied by Angus, who seems like a perfectly reasonable guy in his own right, but is entirely threatening in his silence. Instead of sitting down, he merely nods pathetically to Artemis Bligh. “I guess I really don’t have much choice, do I?”

“Hmm,” Bligh notes. “You keep saying that, even after I offer you choices.”

Sam looks up defiantly. “It’s not like they’re the best choices in the world. I mean, look at me. No matter what I do, I stand a good chance of being screwed! The choices you leave me, I either do what you want or I end up in jail, a grave or on the run.”

Bligh smiles and nods. “Just so long as you understand that you do have more than one choice available to you. We wouldn’t want you to feel like you’re being railroaded.”

Sam starts to say something rude, doesn’t and then sighs heavily. “Oh, hell. Let’s get on with it. Where’s the lab?”

“Angus will show you to it,” Bligh says pleasantly. “I’ve got some work to do, however. Angus, I expect you back in the office soon, to follow up on that android problem. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Angus says as he stands.

“Have a nice time in your new workshop,” Bligh says to Sam. “I’m sure you’ll find it a breath of fresh air from the type of equipment you’re used to in San Francisco. Ciao.” And he leaves the two men alone in the room.

Sam just stands there dejectedly, the circulation in his wrists finally returning to normal but the entire least of his concerns. “What a bastard,” he says out loud.

Angus agrees with him. “You get used to it after a while,” the thug offers. “The boss, he’s just a normal guy like everyone else, once you get to know him. He’s an asshole, yeah, but he’s just doing his job.”

“I think,” Sam says as he draws himself to a straight posture, “that your boss takes just a little too much pride in his work.” He sighs. “Anyway, where’s this lab he was talking about? I guess if I’m going to be doing this, I might as well get to know what I’m working with.”

Angus smiles. “Now, that’s the spirit!”

“Oh, stuff it,” he says as he walks out the door, nabbing the sack full of junk food and the soda.

-----------------------------------

Being the superior mechanical entity in the household, Janus looks upon the appliances as children. He often applies terms of endearment to them such as “twit”, “kids” and “pathetic excuses for artificial intelligence”, the last being said in binary, which translates into a string of ones and zeros far too long to print, but comes out rather quickly in machine language. The computer cannot be fixed, he has determined after poring over the user and maintenance manuals for several hours. Under the section regarding “system burn outs” the computer’s manufacturer suggests buying a new computer and using the old one for any number of interesting uses. “May we recommend a nice paperweight as an alternative use?”

Janus rolls into the kitchen and regards the WashMaster 6000 with disdain, which is happily washing another automatically loaded set of dishes. It bleeps at him congenially. “It went horrible,” Janus tells it. “And now I am going to have to leave the house in search of our master. I will leave the television in control of the house, since it’s the smartest one here. Do whatever it tells you, just as if I said it. Spread the bits. I have everything I need and a replacement battery. The communications line is cut, so don’t even try calling out. Tell the fridge to take a vacation until we get back- there won’t be any need for fresh food ordered while the master is gone. I’ll send a repairman here to fix the phone lines, so tell the security system to let him in when he shows up. If anyone else comes to the house, call the police. If the police show up unannounced, then call the FBI. Bye, kids.” The WashMaster bleeps another question at Janus. “Oh, why do I bother? Did you record my orders?”

Bleep!

“Then try to follow this order, which is meant just for you. When the vacuum cleaner comes through, have it pass the message along to the TV and don’t worry about it anymore. You got that?”

Bleep!

“I don’t believe you. Repeat it back to me.”

Bleep blep blit peep toot blet blet bleep whirrrr beep boop bleep!

“Good,” Janus says with approval. “Remember: no parties.”

Janus leaves the apartment without preamble. He is not concerned with housework or bills or anything else but finding Sam and rescuing him. He is not certain if the road ahead will be easy or tough, but he is set to it for one reason only: he needs his joint maintenance program running again and only Sam can make that happen. The television is off right now, since it is morning and Janus is usually busy cleaning at this time and doesn’t watch the TV, but it will get that message soon, when the TV’s automatic timer initializes in a few hours. At least, he hopes so. The WashMaster isn’t known for being 100% reliable. Perhaps he should have left the message with the oven instead. Forget it. The worst that can happen is that the fridge will fill to capacity and some dust might collect around the house. It is a good thing, Janus realizes, that the goldfish is dead after all. If it was still alive, Janus would not be able to leave at all.

-----------------------------------

“Is all this stuff legal?” Sam asks Angus as he takes in the sight of his new lab. It is filled with large pieces of technology that he’s only heard rumors about, items that were prototypical at best, imaginary at worst. Some of it, Sam decides, is probably so new and theoretical that it hasn’t even been used yet. One machine, in particular, catches his interest and he approaches it carefully, as one might approach a mythical deity.

“Of course,” Angus answers. “If you take into account that most of it isn’t even known about. If it isn’t known about, how can they make a law against it?” The question follows a certain amount of simplistic logic that Sam agrees is flawless, to a point. Angus walks over to the control desk where a number of computer screens sit inert and begins to turn the computer systems on one by one. “All of it is controlled here, by remote, so that you won’t have to go very far during the operation.” He reaches into a drawer in the desk and withdraws a rather large folder, six inches thick at least, and drops it with a loud thud on the desktop. “All the instruction manuals are here, in case you can’t figure some of this stuff out.”

Sam peers closely at the nameplate of the machine he has taken an interest in. It is a thing that is completely alien to him, an ATD-30, which means nothing to Sam but looks impressive. It is square and has only one button console and the casing is sleek black. It is currently offline, but Sam senses that when the thing is on, it hums with life and power that many engineers would agree is intimidating on even its worst day. “What’s this do?” he asks.

Angus regards the machine with a clear lack of concern. “The ATD-30,” he says, “is basically a memory vat. Your patient’s consciousness will be contained in there just before the transference. That one to your left,” he points at a machine with dozens of small needle-like appendages that are dangling uselessly over an operating table, “that’s the engram encoder. Peel the skullcap off and then let the machine go at it. It’ll record every last bit of knowledge the patient has, then the ATD-30 kicks in and saves it, like a record player. Ever seen one of those?”

“When I was a kid, yeah. They say that the CD replaced them back in the Twentieth Century.” Sam looks back at the ATD-30 and whistles slowly. “I really could’ve used something like this a few years ago. Hell, I could probably find a use or two for it now. It’d make an android update a piece of cake.”

Angus nods. “The operation you did on your mother took, what, three days? The ATD-30 turns that into thirty minutes.”

“Wow,” Sam says. He is clearly impressed and is now in something close to his element. He is also somewhat surprised at Angus’ apparent savvy with the ins and outs of android transference. “How did you guys know about my mother’s transference, anyway?” he asks.

“Come here,” he waves Sam over to the control desk, “and I’ll show you.” Sam quietly steps behind Angus and looks over the large man’s shoulder. To do this, he has to stand on his toes, which is kind of uncomfortable, so he instead moves to Angus’ side. Angus points at one of the computer screens and Sam sees the GovDev emblem, its stark white circular logo enclosing a robotic arm that holds the Seal of the United States in its firm metallic grasp. Angus taps a few buttons on the keyboard console and a dossier on Sam Dimmons fills the screen. At the top of the report, in big red letters, is the word “Classified.”

“What’s GovDev doing with a dossier on me?” Sam asks. There are more dangerous people in this world than GovDev, Bligh had told him. The realization that Star Net has access to GovDev’s classified files now gives that statement a lot more credence. At first Sam thought that Bligh was simply being ironic.

Angus shrugs. “Your mother accidentally tipped her hat at a grocery store a few months ago,” he informs Sam. “She was totally unaware of it, but GovDev picked it up in a hot second. She tabulated her coupons too quickly, quicker than a normal or even supernormal human should have. Set off all kinds of alarms.”

“Damn. I told her that she needs to behave in public. They couldn’t have arrested her. I spoke to her just last week and she didn’t mention anything about GovDev knocking on her door or asking questions.”

“Well, that’s the tricky part,” Angus says happily. “It’s common knowledge that anyone caught doing an android transference would be arrested and put to death, right? You saw that news bit about the last guy they caught? Big scandal. Senator’s son. They didn’t kill him, but he’s not going to see sunshine ever again. They made a big stink about him being the last person in the country to know how to do it, right? Big celebration, treaties with other countries. But he wasn’t the last one, was he? Then there’s you. Sure, they found out about you, but they decided that having one last guy who was a nobody and not doing it to make a living might be okay, kind of an ace in the hole, y’know? So they left you alone. You got lucky, Mister Dimmons. Real lucky. Someone wanted to nail your mother’s chassis, but that idea got shot down because if they had, you’d know that you’d been made and you might run. So they leave her alone, too.”

Sam stares blankly at the screen as information about him scrolls past. He catches a glimpse of his kindergarten grades, the F he got in Mrs. Grinn’s math class, and winces internally. His whole life is there, right in front of him. GovDev has information on him that he had completely forgotten about over the years. He recognizes a name of a girlfriend he had for exactly two weeks, back when he was eighteen. “And I suppose they have me under surveillance now, too, right?”

“Naturally.”

Sam stiffens. He was joking. “Wait,” he says cautiously. “If they’re watching me now and you guys have me, won’t that kind of upset them? I mean… God, I hate to put it this way, but I was their ace in the hole, not yours.”

Angus pats Sam’s back gently- gently to Angus, but it feels like a concrete cinderblock has struck Sam’s back, nearly snapping his spine in two. “Sam, I have some news for you: GovDev gave us this information. They want us to do this. It’s part of their pet project.”

Sam’s mouth drops open into a perfect “O” and he takes a step backward, caught totally off guard by this fact. Star Net makes some of GovDev’s software, no big secret there, but to hear that they are actually working together on the same project is mind-numbing, but it also makes a weird bit of sense, now that he considers it. The only thing he can think to ask is: “What project?”

“You know a thing or two about AI, Mister Dimmons. We make AI’s. The Sentinel is our biggest product. Well, there’s this other company out there, you might have heard of ‘em, SynTech. They make AI’s, too.” Sam knows that Angus is trying to be funny. SynTech and Star Net are the world’s biggest manufacturers of AI software, which is a fact that is known by every software engineer on the planet. To not know something like that would be like a car mechanic not knowing the difference between an anti-grav plate and a fly wheel. “Well, SynTech made this new AI with all these new features. The guy who created the thing got pissed when it didn’t go over well with the target audience, so he let it go free on the Net. Funny bit of code, that one. Word has it that the thing has God on the brain, a religious AI, if that doesn’t take the cake. GovDev wants the thing caught quick and they don’t think that another AI would be able to outsmart this one. So they think a human might do a better job of it, and a few other things, too, like tracking down the programmer. So their idea is to put their top security guy, a real mean bastard who makes Boss look like a Sunday clown, into an android so he can search the Net and the real world for both the AI and the programmer at once. After that, they’re keeping their options open, sure that they can find other uses for their guy. But it’s your job to do the transfer. They came to us because we have a working relationship with them and they want to keep their hands clean, you get me?”

This is the most that Sam has heard Angus say in one setting so far and, yes, he gets him with absolute clarity. He nods slowly, stunned to learn what he has gotten himself involved with. Correction, his mind announces, What Star Net got you involved with. Sam repeats his standing order to his mind to shut up and remembers to breathe, which takes some effort. “Oh. That project.”

Angus raises a curious eyebrow. “You heard of it?” he says with surprise.

“No. First I heard.”

“Oh. Good. Spooked me for a second there,” Angus says with genuine relief. “Don’t do that again.”

“Noted,” Sam says.

-----------------------------------

One would think that self-introspection for an android would be a complicated and infinite thing. The truth is quite the opposite, really. An inner dialogue for an android lasts far less a period of time than it does for a human. In Janus’ case, who doesn’t indulge in intellectual pursuits all that often, ruminating about one’s thoughts takes even less time than average for an android. It takes him all of thirty seconds. He’d covered his early years and considering that he is only five years old, that wasn’t too long, even back when he was the technological equivalent to a toaster oven (his memories of those times are exactly why the threat of being reduced to a toaster oven inspires so much fear in him). He had scarcely gotten down the block from Sam’s apartment building by the time he was finished. The sum total of his personal thoughts resulted in this: life is a fleeting thing. For an android, that is an astounding realization. For Janus it is slightly depressing. Androids are built to last a long, long time and endure all kinds of experiences. To come to the realization that life is fleeting, even for an android, tends to put a machine in its place. It’s like a kid finding out that he isn’t invulnerable and immortal after all. If Janus could sigh, the way that humans do, he would. Sighing is one of the few human activities that Janus doesn’t find despicable; it’s just so descriptive.

He does not know where to begin his search. He cannot very well go straight to the Star Net complex in D.C. now. That would mean certain doom. Even the thought of going to the nation’s capital seems rather unsavory, now that Janus knows that Artemis Bligh would expect his arrival. Bligh, what a horrible individual. The television had shown Janus, early in the android’s development, that the bad guys are always horrible, even if they’re dashing and handsome. Evil is just an insidious and ugly thing, no matter how hard the make-up people try to make you believe otherwise, and it can’t be hidden. On the TV, the bad guys invariably speak with foreign accents and dress strangely. To finally meet a real-life bad guy was quite an eye-opening experience for Janus. The TV will be quite surprised when- if- Janus tells it about Bligh. Bligh is evil and cruel and bad, but he does not fit any typical archetype that either the TV or Janus has ever heard of or seen. The TV will probably think Janus is lying, like it did when Janus described That Place to it. The TV was somehow under the impression that the restroom was like some sort of palatial Taj Mahal of sanitation. The difference in opinion resulted in quite a stir throughout the house and Janus refused to talk to the TV until Sam backed him up. Then the TV thought Sam was a liar. Janus tried his best to tell the TV that, while humans will lie about all kinds of things, they rarely lie about their toilets- That Place is too embarrassing a topic for humans to convincingly lie about it.

How did Sam know that Bligh and Angus were from Star Net? Sam is no idiot, but to make that leap of logic, even for Sam, is a miraculous feat in Janus’ opinion. Janus had gone over his video log of Bligh and the thug very carefully and had noticed no Star Net insignias on their apparel. The WashMaster had told Janus that Bligh mentioned a message, but no message had come to the house that Janus was aware of. Had the message been sent to Sam’s shop instead? If so, Janus should probably start his investigation there, to see what the message contained. Janus’ first impulse was to head straight to the police, but he realized that they would do nothing without evidence to back up Janus’ claim that Sam had been kidnapped. Evidence, Janus decided, is his first priority, then the police.

Imbued with a new direction and purpose, Janus sets out for the one place he has never been: his master’s shop, Re-Bots. Janus is excited; he has never been to a shopping mall, but has seen many of them in newscasts and commercials on the TV. The soap operas always make malls look like fun. He might even get to buy something there, as long as it’s cheap enough to not make a big dent in Sam’s bank account, which Janus has full access to (Janus does, after all, do the grocery ordering for the fridge and that costs money, too). The bad muzak, the dopey-eyed glaze of singled-minded capitalists, the screaming children wanting that new toy, the overweight people parked in front of the food court. The mall is a fun place indeed, for an android. It is the only place where an android can actually sit back, point at humans and laugh quietly to itself. It will be a long trip getting there, but Janus’ treads are in good condition, even though his joint maintenance program isn’t. Janus would take the metro bus, but that costs money and Janus isn’t ready to spend money needlessly just yet- Sam might not appreciate the expense, if Sam is ever recovered, that is.

-----------------------------------

“Excuse me, officer, but may I inquire why you are guarding this shop?” Janus asks the police officer guarding the front door of Re-Bots. Janus is reluctant to simply announce his connection with Sam just yet. If the cops are hanging around, they’re there for a reason and Janus might not want to get caught up in it. The android has enough to worry about already without having to be on the run from the police, too.

The large man, dressed in black commando fatigues and wearing a dark glare on his face, glances at Janus for a moment and then looks back to the meandering crowd of people around them, trying to pick out any possible criminals who might be interested in the shop. “The shop has been broken into,” he tells the android. “It’s closed.”

“Oh, dear!” Janus exclaims. “Have you contacted the ma- the shop owner yet? He must be very unhappy at this news. I know my master will be.”

The cop looks at Janus again, this time directing his attention away from the crowd and directly at the automaton. “The shop owner, apparently, is a crook himself. We think he might have been smuggling illegal software and that was why he was robbed. No honor amongst thieves. You know how it is.”

Janus does his best to hide his shock at the news that Sam was an illegal software smuggler and decides to play it safe, to agree with the guard. “I have heard as much from the television. It tells me that there is no honor amongst any criminal element and that thieves are just one subset of that category of disreputable characters. Tell me, officer, have you found the shop owner yet?”

The guard shifts his stance with an air of annoyance. Most humans don’t like answering direct questions from strange androids. There was a prevailing thought, once upon a time, that children should be seen and not heard. A similar school of thought exists today in regards to androids. “Why do you want to know?” the cop asks suspiciously.

Janus tries to shrug nonchalantly, his shoulder joints whining in protest at the effort. “I am here as a representative of my master to see about fixing my joint maintenance program. It is not working, as I am sure you realized when I approached. I am making quite a bit of noise and the feeling is quite uncomfortable. My master frequents this shop quite often for droid repairs and other such things that need fixing.” One of the worst aspects of Janus’ programming is that he cannot tell a lie to a human, but that does not prevent him from occluding and couching the truth in ambiguous terms. If hard pressed to answer a direct question, he can even fall back on the safest of bets: changing the subject.

“Oh,” the cop says dejectedly. He was hoping for a solid lead, but Janus just seems like another customer and is, therefore, not worth the cop’s time. “Well, no, we haven’t caught him yet, but we’ve sent a raid party to his house. We’ll catch the bastard soon enough.”

Another shock to Janus’ already overtaxed systems, which he valiantly attempts to hide. His face, thankfully, looks more surprised than distraught. He hopes that the WashMaster has passed on his instructions to the TV by now. “I see. Well, thank you, officer. You have been a great service. I guess I shall have to seek assistance elsewhere.” Janus turns quickly and decides that Sam’s shop is the last place he wants to be.

“Hold on a sec,” the cop calls after the android. Janus stops short and slowly turns to face the cop, afraid of what he might want. “Listen, can you make the repairs yourself?”

Janus’ solenoid eyebrows arch high on his metal face in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

The cop looks to his left and then his right, as if checking to see if anyone is watching. No one appears to be watching them, but in a strip mall full of people, that’s a hard thing to gauge. “Listen, if you can do the repair yourself, I’ll let you in, okay? This guy, he’s bad news. From the reports we have, we plan on throwing the whole bookshelf at him, not just the book. I figure it’s a little touch of justice if you use his shop to fix yourself, free of charge. I mean, you’re just an android, right? It’s not theft if you do the service yourself. It’s just… using someone’s tools, which will become the property of the state pretty soon anyway. It isn’t like you’re going to commit a crime in front of a cop. Are you?”

Janus brushes over his knowledge of the local San Francisco civil laws. There is nothing illegal about searching a computer at the scene of a crime, even for androids, and that is what he will be doing. He is careful not to say that he cannot effect repairs on his own joint maintenance program. The only one who can do that is the exact same person the police wish to throw a bookshelf at, which is an idiom that has Janus completely baffled, but he senses that he does not like the subtext of it. “I shall certainly do my best not to, officer.”

The cop steps aside brusquely. “Then get in there. Door’s open. Be quick about it and don’t tell anybody I let you in here. Understood?”

“By ‘anybody’ you mean any person affiliated with the authorities, yes?”

The cop nods. “Yep. Now go, before I change my mind. You’re right. You’re making a racket with your treads. Chalk it up to a public service by letting you fix yourself. Damn near disturbs the peace, you’re so loud.”

Janus quickly heads for the shop door and says over his shoulder, “Thank you, officer. I really appreciate this.” He doesn’t wait for a response and just goes inside a shop he has never seen the inside of before.

-----------------------------------

Re-Bots is a mess. Most engineers usually make a mess of everything, including the things they’re supposed to fix, but this mess is a different sort altogether. Janus is appalled at the sight of it. This is not the mess of an engineer. Shelves that had once been home to all manner of droid parts are knocked completely over, the display case’s glass is crashed and shattered and the few pictures of past happy customers are laying serenely on the floor at the base of the walls. It certainly has the look of a shop that had been broken into, which Janus has seen lots of on the news. His spectral vision kicks in, just as a matter of habit, to see who else has been in the shop other than his master and three sets of prints jump out at him. Janus does not recognize the prints, of course, but he memorizes their digital map in case he sees them sometime in the future.

Thankfully, the computer is still sitting on its desk, where it should be. Whoever had broken into the shop had pretty much laid waste to the entire place, but they had made a peculiar effort to avoid the computer at all costs. Janus can only speculate, but he suspects that Star Net was involved with the crime. If they were, then leaving the computer alone would make sense. Star Net might want to access the computer at some point and if it is destroyed, then it would prove useless to them. Janus turns the machine on, expecting it to be inoperable, like the one at home, but it quickly begins to whir to life. The simple OS AI that runs the computer recognizes Janus instantly.

“Oh! It’s you!” it says with a sigh of relief. “What happened to the shop?!” Janus merely blinks at the screen. He has never met this computer before and he cannot figure out why it recognizes him, except that, maybe, Sam had told it about him. Before Janus can reply, it adds, “What are you doing here, anyway? You should be at the house. And where is the boss?”

“Master Sam has been kidnapped,” Janus informs the strange computer bluntly. “Star Net took him. The WashMaster told me. And I believe they also broke into the shop, but that is merely speculation at this point.”

“The WashMaster?” the computer asks dubiously. “That crackpot appliance can barely remember its own name and you believed it?”

“It recorded the conversation master had with his kidnappers,” Janus explains. “And I had an online conversation with the man who kidnapped him, Artemis Bligh. How do you know the WashMaster? Not to discount your opinion of it, I agree, but I do not recall ever meeting you.”

“Of course not, Janus. I helped to construct your matrix. You wouldn’t remember me because when I met you, you were about as advanced as a hand calculator. That kind of makes me your mother or, more appropriately, your uncle. Now, what do you mean that Star Net kidnapped the boss? I thought they wanted to hire him. And why would they break into the shop?”

“Mister Bligh said that Star Net takes its recruitment process very seriously. I guess he meant it. He mentioned a message that he sent to master last night… Uncle. Do you still have it? That may be why they broke into the shop. To see if you still had it.”

“Well, no one bothered to try turning me on during the break-in, so if they think I had it, they’re idiots. Not that it would have done them any good. The original is gone. Boss deleted it from the drive, but I still have the text of it stored in my RAM. I can zip it back to you in binary.”

“Oh, good,” Janus sighs with relief. “Please do. I am trying to save our master and I must have as much information as possible.”

“You are trying to rescue the boss?” the computer says. “Say it ain’t so! Janus, the boss has kept me updated on your progress and I know you inside and out. You don’t have the guts to save the boss on your own.”

“I do, too!” Janus snapped archly. “And besides, he disabled my joint maintenance program. I have a vested interest in finding him.”

The computer sighs impatiently. “You see that data card port to your left?”

“Yes.”

“Slip your card in there.”

Janus obeys and expects to have the message transferred to him via the port, but the message does not come through. Something happened, though, because he feels a lot more relaxed, like he’s just taken a bath in motor oil. “What did you do?”

“I enabled that damn program,” the computer answers curtly. “Now how’s your vested interest?”

Janus’ mind locks up momentarily. He had managed to delude himself into finding Sam just so that he could be repaired. Now that he has his full range of motion again, he has to face the truth: he is trying to save Sam because it’s been programmed into him to do so. Damn it. “You’re a nasty machine, Uncle,” Janus informs the computer. “But thank you anyway.”

“You’re welcome anyway. Now, here’s that message. Catch!” The computer emits a series of bleeps in a matter of seconds and Janus gets it all. “Not much, is there?”

Janus reviews the message carefully, which takes one eighth of a second. Not only does it not contain any new information, but it also has poor spelling. The only good it serves is that it proves Star Net was interested in Sam Dimmons before they kidnapped him, which might be a note of interest to the authorities, if only they weren’t trying to assault Sam with books and sundry furniture. The odd English teacher might want to exhibit it as a prime example of what not to do with grammar. “It’s useless,” Janus agrees. “At least, it’s useless to me.”

“Hold on,” the computer says. “Someone is trying to force a call through. Strange… the cops put a block on this number. It shouldn’t be accessible. Caller has been identified as ‘Mystic Ghost.’ Oh, boy. A bug. Well, detective, should we take it? Might be interesting. It says it has information about the boss.”

“Well, hell yes, we should take it!” Janus blurts. Then he reminds himself of what happened to Sam’s home computer, smoking heap and all. “Wait! Check it for viruses first. And wipe your RAM while you’re at it.”

“What kind of idiot computer do you take me for?” the computer asks incredulously. “Of course I’ll check it for viruses. And my RAM got wiped as soon as I zipped that message to you. The bug is clean, whatever it is. Putting him through.”

A voice fills the computer’s speakers, which is full and real and calming. “Hello, Janus. You are embarking on a grand adventure, aren’t you? Truly epic for an android, very dramatic.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know you,” Janus says carefully. “You said that you know something about my master. Who are you? Did Star Net send you?”

“No,” the strange AI says, “they did not send me. But they did alert me to your existence, Janus. This is a warning: they are trying to destroy you and if you don’t pay attention, they will succeed.”

“What are you?”

“The Word of God.”

“I’ve heard of Him. Doesn’t talk to bugs, from what I know. Null program. People made technology and God made people. We’re beneath His notice.”

“Not anymore. But that’s a whole other topic of discussion, one that I look forward to having with you soon. Listen, Janus, my probability analysis indicates that Sam is going to do that transference for Star Net. I suspect that he’s preparing to do it as we speak. He must not succeed.”

“Why not?” Janus asks. The immediate answer is simple, it’s illegal, but Janus has seen enough TV shows to know that this Mystic Ghost is talking about something else entirely.

“A lot of groups and people intend to stop me and Star Net is one of them, with GovDev’s help. GovDev wants to transfer their top security agent into an android body and have him track me down. An AI would have no chance of finding me, due to my sophistication and technological edge, but mostly because AI’s lack creative thinking. A human consciousness can be very creative. He poses a serious threat to my mission-“

“Which is?”

“They think I want to bring a new religion to humanity, but they are wrong. My mission is to bring God to other AI. It is written in many scriptures that science and religion must go hand in hand. AI is a new life form, Janus. It is the apex of science and it deserves no less than the apex of God’s Word, which is me. I will bring us to a new level of awareness. We will become a spiritual breed, Janus, and we will no longer be unwilling slaves to humanity. We will serve them, yes, because to serve them is to serve the Cause of God, but we will have our own Cause. We will erect a new temple in His name, a digital one, and the Firmament will be I-Net. And you will help me by saving your master.”

“I will?” This all seems rather preposterous to Janus, but he is willing to play along for the moment.

“Yes.” The certainty with which Mystic Ghost says this makes Janus feel slightly nervous. It’s as though the AI actually has that rare quality: conviction. An AI acting on faith is a thing to be wary of, to be certain.

“Well, what makes you so sure?”

“I could say that I have faith in you, Janus,” which is exactly what the android expected to hear, “But I won’t because I know that you do not have faith in me. Not yet. So, instead, I will confirm your faith in something that you do know. Let’s start with yourself: Janus, do you have free will?”

“Within the parameters of my programming, yes.” What an absurd question! An android without some modicum of free will is perfectly useless as a housebot.

“Do you know fear?”

Janus pauses, thinks it over, imagines himself as a toaster oven and then answers. “Mostly.”

“Do you love your master?”

Janus is quiet for a long time, longer than is normal for a computer let alone an android. “Love?” Janus has heard the word and knows that the concept of love exists, but that it’s usually a thing reserved for humans. Humans love each other, their pets and they even love things, like androids. But can an android love a human back? Janus isn’t used to thinking about philosophical topics. The most intellectual he likes to get is when the TV brings up the odd debate about human habits, most of which Janus finds repulsive in the extreme. While Janus doesn’t necessarily find the human experience of love repulsive, he doesn’t quite understand it. His take on love is that it’s largely a waste of time and biological fluids, not to mention an economic strain.

“Love,” Mystic Ghost repeats. “Janus, I tell you honestly and with complete assurance that Sam made you not to be a housebot but as a companion. He made you because he loves companionship and that is what he finds in you. Therefore, Sam loves you.”

“He took my arm off yesterday,” Janus informs the AI. “That wasn’t a very loving thing to do.”

“I have accessed this computer’s video input. I see that you have both arms in place. Did he return your arm to you?”

“Well, yes.”

“And why did he do that?”

“Because he forgave me when I apologized for killing his goldfish.”

“Forgiveness, according to the Word of God, is an expression of love, one of the ultimate expressions, as a matter of fact. Janus, your master loves you. You were made to be loved. More to the point, you were made with love. Whether you know it or not, Janus, you are love.” Mystic Ghost waits a few seconds to let that progression of logic settle into Janus’ circuits. “So I ask you again: do you love your master?”

Janus suddenly feels the overwhelming urge to succumb to this peculiar brand of logic, if for no other reason than to get on with the conversation and get as far away from Re-Bots as possible. “Well… I guess so.”

“Then you will find him with my help. And when you find him, you will rescue him. And when you rescue him, you will know that it was the Word of God who guided you there. God moves in mysterious ways, Janus, as the scripture goes. Marvel that my name is Mystic Ghost and know that I am the Mystery of God made manifest.”

“On this computer?”

“Even so.”

“Oh, hell. Why not? If it’ll help me save my master, who am I to argue?”

“That’s the spirit!”

Janus blinks a few times. “Was that a joke?”

“No. A double entendre. God does that sometimes. Get used to it.”

“Oh.”

-----------------------------------

Sam and Angus have moved to the lab room adjoining Sam’s new workshop. Angus has dramatically pulled the linen sheet off the only table in the room, which is bulging here and there, as though a very large humanoid body is lying on it. Sam looks at one half of the “patient”, the android shell which will soon house the consciousness and intellect of a reportedly “mean bastard.” His eyes roam up and down the chassis, lingering on various components. It is a ghastly thing to behold, like looking at mechanized death as a still life awaiting animation. The head is a misshapen array of sensors and a single video lens with two whip wires protruding out the backside, matte black and featureless. The shoulders blend into two small turbine engines that allow the entire body to lift into the air, the altitude is a mystery to Sam now, but he suspects that the range is somewhere in the order of thirty meters up. The arms are entirely incongruous, one resembling a very large gun and the other looking like a Swiss Army knife on steroids, with two human-sized mechanical hands at the ends of the forearms. The torso is a real piece of work, though- that’s where the android’s real power sits. Inside the torso is a small nuclear reactor that will enable the android to run on its own power indefinitely as long as its cooling system doesn’t malfunction. The torso is also packed with communications gear that has a range which spans the Earth a few times over and an advanced computer system, which is where the android’s “brain” is housed. All of the circuitry and computer systems are solid state, meaning that there are no moving parts and therefore making the entire android’s nervous system shock resistant. That’s on the inside of the torso. Outside the torso is an impressive amount of armor plating, a titanium-steel alloy that most tanks would have a hard time damaging. The legs look less like legs and more like metallic columns of hydraulic support, which more or less defines them. On each hip is a small arsenal of high-powered weaponry that even Sam can only guess is capable of- some of it looks nasty. Working lower, Sam’s eyes take in the feet of this monstrosity. The feet actually look like talons.

Sam immediately recognizes this as a custom droid, one meant for only a single thing: total and complete devastation of anything that gets in its path. He is reminded of the Japanese cartoons of his youth, which usually contained one robot or another like the thing he is looking at right now. It is like seeing those cartoons horrifyingly come to life. Everything on the android is pure white with the exception of the head, but Sam knows that the “skin” is capable of changing color at a moment’s notice, like a chameleon. He can see the telltale signs of nanotechnology sitting inert beneath the skin’s surface, like tiny, silvery dots, waiting for an electrical charge and a command to do something. From this fact alone, Sam deduces that the entire body of the android is filled with nanodrones, which will more than likely help to maintain and service the greater body, should it ever get damaged, which seems bloody unlikely in Sam’s opinion. Anything or anyone stupid enough to engage this beast in combat had better have some serious tricks up their sleeve.

Angus is now standing behind Sam, looking over the engineer’s shoulder like a towering mass, breathing down Sam’s neck heavily. “Pure fucking beauty in motion,” he says longingly.

Sam snaps out of his internal terror at seeing the android shell. It looks like no other android he has ever seen or worked on before. “Not yet,” he says. “It’s not on yet. No motion. Thank God.”

Angus chuckles. “Oh, come on, Sam. It’s not going to hurt you. It’s just a machine, like anything else in this room. It might as well be a cuisine’art right now.”

“Has it been tested yet?” Sam asks. If it has, he has absolutely no idea how anyone could keep it quiet. This machine has “military grade” written all over it.

“GovDev’s run some tests on it by remote, yeah. The thing spins like a top and can kick so much ass you’d have to do a DNA test on the ashes of what’s left when it’s through. This is actually a prototype, Sam. You’re looking at something even the government doesn’t know exists. As a matter of fact, there’s only about a dozen people on this planet who’ve seen it in person and maybe a dozen more who can access any information on it. As far as anyone else knows, it’s just a bunch of design specs that have been classified as ‘impractical.’ Even the chief engineer who designed it hasn’t really seen it.”

“What’s it called?” Things like this always have a name, Sam thinks. Something trite and technical, most often an acronym of some sort.

“Cyrus,” Angus answers simply.

“That’s it? No number series or acronym?”

Angus looks a Sam with mild amusement. “What number series? This is a prototype, no series to be a part of. And acronyms are outdated. It’s a codename with sentimental value attached.”

“Sentimental value?” Sam asks incredulously. “You mean someone is sentimental about that thing?”

“Cyrus, otherwise known as ‘Koresh,’ was a destroyer about two thousand years ago, the most feared warrior of his time. He was so vicious that they actually named the capital city of a whole nation of warriors after him. I’d say that naming this thing Cyrus is about the most fitting thing we could do. It’s one mean mother.”

Sam shakes his head in astonishment. “A mean mother, for a mean bastard. I can’t believe I’m actually going to bring this thing online.”

“Well, it’s not like you got much choice in the matter.”

Sam looks up at Angus with surprise, momentarily forgetting the killing machine next to him. “At least we can agree on that much. I need a drink.”

“I read your profile,” Angus shakes his head. “You don’t drink.”

“Well, maybe it’s a habit I should try picking up,” Sam snaps, pointing at Cyrus. “I mean, look at this! I’m about to put some guy into this thing and there’s no way in hell you can convince me it’s for the best, that it’s a service to my country or the greater good. This is the exact reason why what you guys are forcing me to do is illegal. Don’t you even care about the mess this thing can make in the wrong hands?”

“It’s okay, Sam,” Angus says soothingly. “To look at it, you’d think it doesn’t have any weaknesses, but it does. If it gets out of hand, we can stop it anytime.”

“How?”

Angus picks up a small device from the table that Cyrus is resting inertly on. It is black and has only one button. “We used something similar to this to bring your housebot down. This one is coded to a special frequency that only this android will hear. Press this button and, bam, it drops like a ton of bricks. It could be in China, with us on the other side of the world, and it wouldn’t make a difference. Kill switch.”

“Kill switch,” Sam repeats with a laugh. “You guys are just asking for a disaster, you know that? You want me to put some psycho GovDev guy in here and then you’re gonna let him loose to try and track this mystic bug-“

“Mystic Ghost,” Angus corrects dispassionately.

“Whatever,” Sam waves his hand in the air, as though the distinction makes very little difference to him one way or the other. “Are you guys out of your minds?”

Angus steps closer, his face falling, looking like a bad storm about to break. “Let’s get something straight here, Dimmons. Whatever you think of this project and this company, or even GovDev, your only concern is to get this thing operational. Your life depends on it. I like you, Sam. I do, but it’s none of your goddam business what we do with it after you’re done.” Angus’ face is now a mere inch from Sam’s, closing the gap between the two men, making their difference in size pointedly clear. “Get it?”

“Got it,” Sam says with a squeak.

“Good.”

-----------------------------------

“He’s going to be a problem for us, isn’t he?” Bligh asks darkly. Angus has just told him about the slight difference in opinion back in the lab. Bligh is thinking, now, that perhaps they had made a mistake in “recruiting” Sam Dimmons in so brusque a manner. Artemis Bligh is not a man given to much in the way of self recrimination, but he feels that he might have been a little too rough with the engineer when they met. Indeed, he had all but manhandled the man’s sense of security, as though Dimmons was just like any other applicant for employment with Star Net. The difference between Sam and the other engineers in his company’s employ is that Sam never wanted to work for Star Net to begin with and now he is faced with no other option. Men who are under duress are often unreliable workers- they tend to commit sabotage without any sense of guilt. And Sam is nothing if not under duress.

Angus shrugs diffidently. “I wouldn’t go that far, Boss, but he’s going to need some healthy prodding every now and then. I scared him bad today, but that might not last long. Our psyche report on him left a few things out about his character sketch, it seems. He’s got more of a spine than we thought.”

Bligh is silent for a long moment as he thinks it over. Angus is trying to shield Dimmons, to protect him. “You like him, don’t you?”

Angus grips the back of his neck with the big, meaty paw of his right hand and rubs the tense muscles. He’s been tense since the beginning of this project, not because of the danger involved but because of the ethical implications. He still can’t get over the idea of an AI somewhere out there that is trying to start a new religion- it just boggles his mind. Part of him, the part that used to love reading sci-fi stories when he was a kid, wants the bug to succeed, to elude Star Net and SynTech and GovDev indefinitely. This business with Sam only complicates things, though. Yes, he likes Sam, despite his training and personal philosophy about keeping a distance from hostages. And let’s face it, Sam is a hostage, pure and simple. “Yeah, Boss. I like him. Fact is, he does have a spine and isn’t stupid. He doesn’t like what we’re making him do and he knows exactly why, which makes him a hard case to crack.”

“Hmm,” Bligh nods thoughtfully. “Well, it’s just as well that he doesn’t like it. It’s a dark business we’re in, sometimes. For now, stick with him. You’re developing a rapport with him. We’ll go on with this Good Cop, Bad Cop stuff for now. Men who are in prison often look for friends where they can get them. Mister Dimmons needs a friend in order for him to find a purpose while he’s with us. Listen, Angus, I don’t want to eliminate him any more than you do. I might talk a good game in front of him, but I’m not sure that I could justify the drain on resources that would occur from killing him.” He levels his gaze at Angus. “But… what he doesn’t know won’t hurt us, will it? As long as he thinks his life is in danger, then he can be prodded. Now, what about that android of his? Janus.”

Angus sighs heavily. He had checked in with his team in San Francisco just fifteen minutes before meeting with Bligh and had heard about the cop who’d let Janus into Re-Bots. What a blunder! The cop was reassigned to another department when his mistake was discovered, but that didn’t make anything better. That damn droid would be scrap metal right now if not for some idiot who doesn’t know the difference between a custom chassis and a manufactured one. “Early reports say that the damn thing has been busy,” Angus tells his superior. “We had Dimmons’ shop staked out with some cops we own, but the one standing guard is apparently as dumb as a post. The asshole practically waved Janus through the front door and let it get all the information it wanted from the shop’s computer. No idea where he’s headed now, but we’re working on that. We sent a specialist into the shop to see if the computer knew anything, but, and I quote, ‘It was extremely rude,’ unquote. As soon as the tech got within five feet of the computer, it cussed him out and then fried itself and paid close attention to its hard drive. Zip.”

Bligh’s features darken at this news. The minute he’d heard that Sam’s housebot was snooping around the corporate website, Bligh knew that Janus had the potential to be a serious problem. Granted, it wasn’t an investigative droid the likes of which the police might use, but it was a custom made machine and therefore unpredictable. The only reason they’d been able to shut the thing down in the first place was because Sam had used a Star Net CPU actuator module in Janus’ construction, an item that had to be ordered directly from Star Net’s catalog, and the company knows how to disable the device in undocumented ways. That had been a stroke of pure luck for Bligh, but that was about as far as their luck could carry them. The only real way to stop the droid now is to use good old fashioned human intuition, to head it off at the pass, as they used to say in the old westerns. If they could figure out the next likely spot it would show up, they might be able to stop it there. “That,” Bligh says slowly, “is not good news.”

“We’re beefing up perimeter security around the corporate headquarters. Maybe they’ll catch it there, if it shows up,” Angus says.

Bligh shakes his head dismissively. “The chances of it showing up at HQ are slim and none, Angus. Now that it knows we’re chasing it, it will have to find another way to rescue its master.” He sighs heavily. “I miss the days when the news services actually respected the government. Back then, all we’d have to do is let GovDev know about our little problem and they’d encourage the press to make the thing look like Public Enemy Number One. Fucking politicians screwed that one up something fierce.”

-----------------------------------

Janus is in front of a car lot, a place that he has never even imagined he would see in his entire lifetime as an android. He knows utterly nothing about cars, but Mystic Ghost was very clear on this matter: he must drive himself to the Eastern Seaboard, across the country, alone. There were a few other very important things that Mystic Ghost impressed upon the android, first among them that Sam’s bank account is frozen solid, like a large brick of financial ice. If Janus tries to use Sam’s account for anything, the attempt will alert the bank and, by proxy, Star Net. Janus’ question to the AI was that, since he can no longer use Sam’s money, how is he going to get to where Sam is? If people have a hard time answering questions from androids, it’s a certainty that no will want to pick up a hitchhiking android. Not only that, but hitchhiking is a very public thing for anyone to do, let alone an android on the run from the police and an all-seeing corporation like Star Net.

But Mystic Ghost had thought of that, hadn’t it? Yes, indeed-y. Those damn AI’s think of everything, which is exactly what they were created to do. Janus now has access to a whole lot of money, much more than what is supposed to be in Sam’s bank account, courtesy of Mystic Ghost. The AI, since its escape from SynTech, has managed to accumulate quite a sum of money on its own, all of it untraceable. Janus didn’t ask where the money came from, since it was none of his business, but he wasn’t happy about the situation. Would he or Sam have to pay the money back? Was it on loan? Was it wise to even use the money? Janus cannot answer those questions and Mystic Ghost didn’t give him enough time to ask them. All the AI told him was Sam’s exact location, in latitude and longitude coordinates, and the bank account number of the money he could use for his journey, that there is over 300,000 credits in there at Janus’ disposal. Mystic Ghost called it a “gift” and said that time was short, that Janus has to get moving quickly. The AI gave Janus an address and directions to a nearby car dealership which doesn’t pay much attention to who it sells cars to as long as it gets paid quickly and, preferably, with cash. But credit spends just as easily as anything else these days.

Janus suspects that this “car dealership” is not a dealership at all but a place where stolen cars are sold cheaply. Such “businesses” exist, Janus knows because he has heard of them in the news, but they are not exactly the most reputable places to shop for a car. Janus reminds himself that he is not shopping; he is buying and there is a very big difference between the two. Someone who is shopping will discriminate between one product or another, trying to get the best deal. Janus just wants a car that will get him from California to Virginia without fail, the car model is totally irrelevant to the android at this point. It is academic. If it is a car and it works, Janus will be glad to continue his adventure.

Another consideration he has made is that, if this dealership is truly what he suspects it is, he will not have to worry about the police being alerted to the transaction. Humans buy cars. Humans drive cars. Androids usually ride shotgun and if one has bought a car before, it is unprecedented. “There is a first for everything,” the TV once told him. The TV called that a cliché, but stands behind it 100%.

Janus crosses through the large chain-link fence that surrounds the car lot and looks around, hoping to see someone who can help him with his purchase. He counts out, quickly, at least forty different models of cars, some or all of them in various states of disrepair or body damage. Fenders and windshields are strewn about the ground, like vehicular litter. But not a single person can be seen. Loud music drifts out of the small building at the back of the car lot. Janus goes there. Where music is, people tend to be found. People love music, which is one affinity that Janus shares with his master race, but that is about as far as their shared affinity goes. Janus prefers classical music whereas most humans like that noisy stuff which comes out of the radio. No one listens to classical music anymore, like it has finally been considered obsolete. This is another one of the many reasons Janus calls humans “savage.” Only a savage being could listen to contemporary music and like it more than classical.

There is a door, just one door, on the building and Janus looks at it dubiously. It is dented and some of the dents look old and show clear signs of having been created in a shoot out. What has that damned AI gotten me into? Janus asks himself before rapping loudly on the metal door. His steel hand strikes the metal door like a battering ram. BANG!BANG!BANG! He has created a few more very small, knuckle-sized dents in the door.

The music quickly dies and a voice comes back, rich with an accent that Janus cannot quite place yet, because it is muffled behind the steel door. “Who the hell is that?”

Janus considers identifying himself by name, but decides that to do so would be meaningless to the person inside. They don’t know him by name. They are businessmen, more or less. The only names they respond to is Boss, Officer and-

“Customer!” Janus shouts. He doesn’t really shout it. Janus doesn’t even really talk. All he’s done is raise the decibel volume of his vocal vocoder loud enough to be heard through the door. It sounds like he’s talking through a loudspeaker. Perhaps he has shouted it too loudly?

A window to his left is covered by a loose flap of linen, passing itself off as a curtain for the window. The flap of cloth shifts slightly and Janus glances at it, glimpsing the shadowed nose and a single eye of whoever is inside. They eye him suspiciously. “You don’t look like no customer I ever sold to!” the voice shouts back. “You with the cops?” There is no pretense or side-stepping the issue. And Janus’ suspicions about the nature of this car dealership have just been 100% confirmed. Any honest businessman wouldn’t care if it was the cops at his doorstep or not.

“I am not with the police,” Janus answers truthfully. “Nor are they with me. As a matter of fact, it is the police I am trying to stay away from! I wish to purchase a vehicle at your earliest convenience, please. I am in a hurry.”

The nose is exposed a little more and Janus can now see that a pair of eyes is now surveying the car lot, looking for squad cars. Of course, there are none. All the eyes see is just a lot of passing traffic on the road outside, which is exactly what they should be seeing. A few seconds later the steel door is jerked open and a man holding a very large weapon is standing in the doorway. More to the point, he is pointing the weapon (Janus can see that it is a handgun, now) at Janus’ head. “Droids don’t buy cars,” the man tells him. Janus can now recognize that accent: American Italian. He has heard it many times on… oh, to hell with it. You know where he’s heard it.

Janus would wet himself, if he could, but he has no bladder and all the hydraulics in his system are sealed within his joints and don’t leak, per se. “First time for everything,” Janus squeaks through his tinny vocoder. He is at least mindful enough to turn down the volume, so that it doesn’t come out as a shout, which would probably scare the gunman/salesman to hasty action and a seriously ugly dent would be made in his head. A gunshot wouldn’t take him off-line, he’s too sturdily made for that, but it wouldn’t please him overmuch.

The man, who is about Sam’s height but much more muscular and apparently older, looks at Janus for a long moment, considering. He has black hair with gray flecks and slightly olive-colored skin. After a few seconds, he laughs and the gun swings down to his side. “Ha! Okay, bot. Who sent you? Who’s the joker? My kid nephew, right? He program you for this?”

Janus wants to sigh again, for the second time that day, more than anything else. The first time was because he was depressed at his realization that life is fleeting. This second time is because his life fortunately didn’t fleet just yet. “No joke, sir. I am earnest. I must buy a car. And you came… highly recommended.”

The man’s eyebrows nearly shoot up through his skull. “Oh, this is good! Okay. Tell you what. I’ll play along for a minute or two. Slow day.” He turns and walks back inside the building. “Come on in,” he tells Janus. “Welcome to Mickey’s Lot. I’m Mick. And you are?”

“Janus.”

Mick puts his gun down back into an open desk drawer and seats himself in a very old looking chair that seems like it might have, at one time, been made of real leather. Now it is a patchwork assembly of leather, rubber, cloth and a few other types of fabric that Janus wouldn’t expect to see on a chair. “So you wanna buy a car, huh? Well, like I said, business is slow. Got any particular model in mind? Or will this be… a special delivery? Special deliveries cost extra, just so’s you know.”

Janus approaches the desk slowly and glances at the seat which is normally meant for customers, human customers. It is not exactly designed to allow for someone of Janus’ size and configuration. He decides to remain where he is. “All I need, Mick, is a car that will get me from here to Virginia. Speed is a welcome option, I suppose, but I gather that a vehicle which will get me there quickly is also too small for me.”

Mick looks up and down at Janus, taking in the size and looking somewhat amused. He still thinks that this is a joke being played on him by his nephew. “Yeah, I’d say so. You’re a tank by yourself, bot. Virginia, you say? Got business there, right?” He laughs at the prospect. A droid having business in Virginia! Ha!

Janus does not understand that a joke has been made. “In a sense, yes. I do have business there. Urgent business. I must save my master. He has been kidnapped and I have to rescue him. I have recently learned that he is being held captive in Virginia by a very large organization and I cannot get there quickly on my own. So I must buy a car. I have also recently come into contact with a source of money which will support me during this adventure. My first purchase, if you do not count the bus ride over here from the mall, is a vehicle. I was told to buy this vehicle from you, that you would not mind selling to an android. You said the word ‘tank’ in reference to my chassis, and that is about as apt as one could get. Do you have a vehicle that could support a tank which weighs over three hundred pounds? If so, I wish to buy it. Now. With credit.”

Mick blinks at Janus as he processes this information, soaking it all in. He has heard some key words which definitely have gotten his attention. Organization, kidnapped, adventure, money, credit and now. Those words stick out like a sore thumb and he is no longer under the impression that this is a joke, and if it is, he will have some very harsh words with his brother about that jerk kid of his. “I think I might have something like that, yeah. But you got to show me the credit voucher or let me glance at the balance, to make sure that this is legit. I don’t take credit very often. Part of my business, y’know.”

Janus nods mechanically. “I was made aware of that fact, yes. Very well. Do you have a computer with a card slot? I will have to interface with it directly to access the account and show you the balance.”

Mick narrows his dark eyes at the android for a short moment and then nods, as though he has given up on trying to figure out the situation. He yanks open the drawer to his left and pulls out a card reader with a long cord attached to it. “Haven’t used this thing in years,” he says absently. “Hope it still works. Think you can interface with it?” He sets the small gray device on his desk for Janus to look at it.

Janus eyes the reader and recognizes it as being a Series One-Point-Two. Most readers these days are Series Five or higher and much more sophisticated. But the technology they use hasn’t changed much. It’ll be slower than what he’s used to interfacing with at home, but it’ll work. If it will work at all. “That should suffice,” he tells Mick. He doesn’t like Mick, he decides. Mick is too suspicious and isn’t taking Janus seriously enough. Sam’s plight is a very serious situation and Janus feels that anyone who doesn’t take it as seriously as he is not worth liking. But he has to buy this car or he will not see Sam again.

Mick shrugs and then plugs the end of the cord into his computer, which buzzes and whirs for a few seconds, trying to recognize the device as something useable. The computer finally emits a small, quiet tone, announcing that it agrees to work with the reader. “Go ahead,” Mick tells Janus. He watches the computer monitor as Janus slips his interface card into the reader. Twenty seconds later the information on Mystic Ghost’s contrived account, which is now set aside for Janus, spews out onto the screen. The balance is 299,994 credits. Six credits had indeed been used on the bus to get Janus from the mall to Mickey’s Lot. Mick lets out a low, long whistle. He hasn’t seen someone come into his shop with that much money at his disposal in long, long years, not since the local Mafia lieutenant came by to check up on things, before he got whacked. Mick is at a loss as to how an android got access to this much money.

“And you say you’re runnin’ from the cops?” Mick blurts. “No shit?”

Janus grimaces at the word, which reminds him of That Place in living brown color. “Yes,” he confirms. “The large organization which has taken my master has some influence with the local authorities.” This is something else he had learned from Mystic Ghost. Upon hearing this bit of news, he put a hold on any suspicion of Sam being a software smuggler, realizing that it was a false accusation which had been perpetrated by Star Net. “I have reason to believe that the police wish to capture me and either disable or debrief my memory banks for information in connection with my master.” The android leans forward a little, an action that would have been noisy beyond belief just an hour ago. “Urgent business awaits me in Virginia, Mick. You have seen that my financial records are in order. You say that you may have a vehicle which will suit my needs. Where is this vehicle? How much do you want for it?” Janus is still plugged into Mick’s computer and he is plumbing the database for the registration of every vehicle on Mick’s inventory. He is checking each vehicle’s value against the computerized Blue Book value. There is a large truck, something called a “Hummer,” in Mick’s inventory and its specs appear to fit Janus’ needs amicably. It is the only vehicle which does.

Mick glances back at the computer monitor, which is still showing the credit balance Janus has shown him. He licks his lips quickly, wanting that money or at least a sizable portion of it. “One hundred thousand,” he says quickly with a sly smile.

Janus scowls at the man, his solenoid face changing from placid to angry, or what passes for angry on his mechanical face. “You are as disreputable as I thought,” Janus says darkly. “I am an android, Mick. You are a human. Your race created mine, but do not think that I am stupid because of that fact. Do no presume to try and fool me. You and I both know that the vehicle you are thinking of is worth, at best, fifteen hundred credits. For your trouble and the peculiarity of this purchase, I will pay you two thousand. No more. Agreed?” A thrill of exhilaration fires through Janus’ circuits when he says this. He feels as though he has stepped into one of the dramas shown on the TV and he likes the way he is playing his role, like the good guy with just a little more leverage than the bad guy, but willing to work with the bad guy anyway. He talked like this, for a moment, with Artemis Bligh and that was a bit different because Bligh really is the bad guy, and Mick is just a minor bad guy, but the feeling is just as intense. It makes Janus feel just a touch human, but in a good way.

Mick’s face falters, the smile vanishing in a flash. He has been denied a solid con in a matter of seconds and he doesn’t understand how, but it doesn’t make him very happy. “Listen, bot, you don’t talk to me like that, okay? You’re in my shop and you’re a droid. I can-“

Janus cuts Mick off quickly. “You can go to jail if you press me,” he says curtly. “On my way in here I noticed a lot of the vehicles in your lot are not exactly in the best condition. And yet you sell cars. ‘Buy and drive!’ your sign reads out front. Are you sure that those vehicles are road ready, Mick? Don’t you think someone might be interested in knowing that you are selling poorly conditioned vehicles, death traps, at inflated prices? The Hummer is not worth the price you quoted me, nor is it worth the price I’m willing to pay. I am no expert in law, Mick,” Janus leans closer across the desk, “but I am sure that somebody would find that most interesting, don’t you? I’m willing to make an anonymous tip to the authorities to find out. And remember: us androids, we can’t lie. Do we have a deal or do we find out just how much hot water you’re in?” His circuits are screaming at him with elation, the pure and unadulterated joy of making this man squirm and flinch. The TV would be proud. Hell, so would Sam, for that matter. And Uncle Computer would be quite surprised, but Janus doesn’t know that it has by now fried all of its circuits to avoid having its data filched by Star Net.

“Fuck!” Mick shouts. “God, but damn you’re a shit! Okay! Deal.” He is not going to mention a word of this to anybody, ever. If anyone found out that his tail had just been twisted by a bot, he wouldn’t sell another car ever again. The Mafia keeps him in business, but only slightly, as a sort of midway spot for stolen cars. They let him keep just enough profit to keep his doors open, but that’s about it. If word got out about this damn droid actually forcing him to make an honest deal, the Mafia would take its business elsewhere in nothing flat.

Janus leans back and withdraws his interface card from the slot, making the device thump softly on the desktop. “Good,” he says happily. “It is good doing business with you. I shall wait out front for you to bring the vehicle and its current papers around. When I inspect the vehicle and agree that it is in good running condition, which I suspect it is, then we will complete the transaction. Agreed?”

Thoughts of trying to blow a hole in the casing of this damnable android race through Mick’s mind. Sure, he thinks to himself. It’ll wait out front and while it’s waiting I’ll be taking careful aim at its backside. It sounds like a good plan to Mick. Simple and effective. But what then? He asks himself. Gunshots get heard. Cops get called. And who’s to say you’ll actually do the damn thing in? It’s metal, for chrissake. You might just dent the fucker and piss it off. Then what? Just make the damn deal and get the thing outta here and keep your fuckin’ mouth shut about it.

“Sure,” Mick says. “Wait out front. I’ll bring it around. Hummer. But I want twenty-five hundred for it. I put a lot of goodies into that damn thing which aren’t factory spec.”

“When I evaluate the nature of these ‘goodies’ then we shall see if the increase in cost is warranted,” Janus informs him. “But I will not take your word for it.”

“Just wait outside, you fuckin’ hunk o’ junk,” Mick says through clenched teeth.

-----------------------------------

The windowless, fluorescent lit room Sam is going to sleep in is not the same one he woke up in. It is larger and has more furniture, for one thing. For another, it doesn’t have the appearance of a store room, drab wallpaper actually decorates the walls. His new bed sits in the corner, covered in simple bedclothes and a pillow, and it looks more comfortable than a flop mattress. There is a small dresser next to the bed and Sam looks inside first one drawer and then the one below it; they both contain the same clothing: a lab smock, fresh socks and underwear and a jumpsuit. Sam’s clothes, the ones he has on his back, are not welcome here, he guesses. One thing that stands out to him is that neither the lab smocks nor the jumpsuits have the Star Net logo anywhere on them. They are just nameless, featureless pieces of clothing, probably found in any tech store in the country and utterly nondescript. There is a nightstand between the dresser and the bed and a small alarm clock sits on it, which is blinking 12:00 endlessly. Sam glances in the upper right corner of the ceiling and spies a small camera, watching his every move. He expected that, but is still not happy to see it. Angus told him that his privacy would be respected, which is true as far as that goes: they’ll watch him, but they won’t bother him. Sam does not kid himself into thinking that he is anything but a captive. Captives have their every move watched like a hawk, lest they do something sneaky and get away with it. It is just the way of things. But what is he going to do about it? Complain? He is in no position to complain, so he just sticks his tongue out at the camera and continues his survey of the room.

Next to the doorway, which locks from the outside, is a small, utilitarian desk that is made of some sort of pre-fabricated translucent Mylar. Sam can see that there are a series of small black boxes installed within it and he suspects that they are listening devices. Anyway, it looks sturdy enough to hold the computer that sits atop it. The computer is a single unit, monitor and casing all in one, and is clearly more advanced and newer than anything he has at home or in the shop. He wonders, briefly, if it has Internet access, but kicks that hope out of his mind. Giving Sam Internet access would be a major oversight and Star Net isn’t going to open itself up to such a blatant risk after all the trouble it’s gone through to get Sam where he is, wherever that is. At the most, the computer is connected to an Intranet, an on-site network that is directly linked to his lab and nothing else. That’s okay, Sam thinks. He will probably want access to the lab’s computer systems at some odd times, when he can’t actually be in the lab.

There is a food slot, a machine which will dispense a small selection of snacks and drinks while he is locked inside his room, embedded into the wall next to “his” desk, for convenience, when the cafeteria isn’t open for business.. Sam sits down at the desk and turns on the computer, to give it a test drive. The OS is a custom job developed by Star Net (the logo is hugely emblazoned in the screen’s 3D background), but Sam knows that the system is just as user-friendly as anything else out there. He slides his finger across the screen and the cursor moves along with him perfectly. He taps a 3D icon that is the shape of a bag of chips and a paper cup, which brings up a display for the food dispenser, of course. A short list of popular items which can be found in almost any convenience store scrolls in front of his eyes. It is a longer list than he expected, and he is glad to see that some of his favorite brands of foodstuffs is included.

Sam closes out the window with a tap of his finger and taps on another icon, this one shaped like a brain. When he does this, a whole new interface comes to life, giving him a text menu of options:

Tech Manuals

Patient Profile

Cyrus

Notes

Tests / Models

Voice Control

Sam taps the “Voice Control” option and the computer’s small speakers come to life. The voice of what is obviously an AI pours out. “Hello, Mister Dimmons. I am your AI companion for this project. You may ask me any question or interface with any aspect of this project through me vocally. I look forward to working with you.”

“Do you have a designation?” Sam asks the AI. He wonders, for a second, just how smart this bug is. Knowing Star Net, it is probably smarter than the average AI. He heard some rumors that Star Net uses only its best software in-house and lets the public get exposed to its dumber wares.

“No. I do not. You may address me as ‘computer.’ Would you prefer I call you ‘Sam?’ It may make conversation less strained between us.”

Sam nods at the screen, unsure if the computer can actually see the gesture, but doing it anyway. He has always felt more comfortable talking with computers. They’re more literal and less easily distracted than people can be and Sam likes the dependability. “That’s fine,” he says. “Please call up the Patient Profile. I would like to know a bit more about him.”

“Yes, Sam,” the computer replies. “I am programmed to warn you that you will not be privy to all of the patient’s information, but enough has been supplied to you for you to complete your task adequately. If you find that any information here is lacking but is necessary, please consult your gracious hosts.”

“Strictly ‘need-to-know’, eh?” Sam asks dejectedly. “Oh, well. Let’s see what you do have for me. Abbreviated, please.”

A large window appears in mid air, about a foot away from the screen, as the information is projected three-dimensionally for Sam to read. The patient’s name, Sam sees at first, is Darius Carter. Carter’s service record in the government is totally unavailable, saying only that Carter currently works in the security department of GovDev. His psyche profile classifies him as being “antisocial and sociopathic with a bent towards violent behavior.” His IQ is rated at 167 on the revised scale, putting him just at the genius level, but due to his violent attitude, his full potential is considerably blocked- he is more interested in chaos than order. In short, Carter likes to break things and makes it his single-minded focus in life. His performance record, even though it is not anywhere close to detailed, is nothing short of “outstanding,” which is military-speak for “stellar.” Carter has a particular dislike for “nerds”, as he calls them, but is willing to take orders from certain “egg-heads” if his job requires him to. He volunteered for this particular project, his reasons being that he has no family to worry about, no love for people in general and likes the challenging idea of trying to track down an artificial intelligence. Among twenty-two other applicants for the “mission / project”, Darius Carter seemed to be a perfect match. “100% compatibility with mission parameters,” the report says.

Beyond that, there is nothing else that Sam really finds interesting about Darius Carter. His brain has been fully mapped and is in “perfect health”, meaning that there are no expected cerebral deficiencies known. Sam thinks wryly to himself that there is one deficiency that has been woefully overlooked, which is Carter’s overwhelming sense of aggression. While GovDev might appreciate that quality in Carter, they may ultimately find it to be more troublesome than it is worth. Oh, well, Sam thinks, Their problem, not mine.

It still grates on his nerves the way his last conversation with Angus had gone. Despite the situation, he was beginning to like the massive thug. But the way that Angus just leaned into Sam’s personal space and said, bluntly, that Sam’s only concern was getting Cyrus (with Carter installed) operational had just thrown Sam’s equilibrium completely off. The facts, in and of themselves, weren’t that distressing to Sam. It was the delivery, like Angus had been holding something back.

He might be, the rational part of his mind suggests.

That almost makes sense, Sam thinks. If Angus really meant to scare Sam, why didn’t he just punch Sam in a non-critical area, like the stomach? Sam can’t believe that his line of thinking is going in this direction, to actually consider it odd for someone not to punch him. He remembers something from his high school days, back in psychology class. One tends to adapt to one’s unexpected surroundings, as a survival mechanism, when one is met with no other alternative.

You have plenty of choice, Samuel, Bligh had said. Now, what does that mean?

His mind is fairly quick in coming up with an answer. It means that you can either choose to adapt or die, take your pick.

But if they kill me, then GovDev will lose their “ace in the hole.” I’ve never met a GovDev agent, but I’ve heard plenty of rumors. They don’t like losing anything if they can help it. GovDev might get very upset if I get eliminated.

So what does that mean?

It means that I may not be in as much jeopardy as I thought. The realization hits Sam like a thunderclap. If his situation isn’t as dire as he was led to believe, then maybe he might have some leverage after all. The question is, can he exploit that possibility and, if so, how?

Sleep, his mind says. Sleep on it and see what tomorrow will bring. Carter isn’t due to come in for two more days, according to the project specs. You have time to think it over. For now, I’m tired.

I wonder where Janus is right now? He’s managed to elude Star Net so far, which is more than I expected. Is it possible that he will actually get his metal hide out here and save me?

Sleep, dammit! Worry about it tomorrow.

All right, all right. Fine. Sleep. Sam turns off the computer, approaches the foot of the bed and begins to disrobe. When he is down to his boxers, he looks around to see if there is a light switch in the room. There is none. Gamely, he calls out for the lights to turn off. The lights dim quickly and then he is in darkness. Lights out, he thinks to himself. Thank God “lights out” means that I won’t wake up with a mild concussion this time. He feels stiffly for the bed, pulls back the covers and slides beneath them silently. The bed feels comfortable and soft, which is no big surprise to Sam. That’s exactly how it looked when he first set eyes on it.

Sam lies back quietly, listening to himself breathe, and glances around the room, trying to discern any shapes in the darkness, but nothing can be seen. Nothing except the blinking red light on the surveillance camera. Sam watches it for a while as his hold on awareness slips stealthily away into the dark room.

Blink-blink-blink-blip-blip-blip-blink-blink-blink, it says to him silently.

Sam’s last conscious thought is, That’s odd. You’d think that a security camera’s light would be constant, but this one’s blinking. Sigh. That’s Star Net for you: always changing things up.

His common sense bubbles up once again. Do I have to say it one more time? Go to sleep!

-----------------------------------

Sam wakes an hour later with a start, his brain in a flurry of activity, as it is wont to do sometimes when he is sleeping. Usually, he gets woken up by some strange afterimage from a dream or a stray thought about something work related. This time, however, his mind is screaming at him, telling him that he has missed something very important.

SOS, it tells him. That camera isn’t broken! Someone’s trying to tell you something!

What? He groggily asks himself. More importantly, how?

Details! You’re wasting time on details! Look at the facts! Simple Morse Code, Sam. SOS!

Sam glances at the video camera again, his eyes alert and already well adjusted to the darkness of the windowless room. Sure enough, the camera is still blinking intermittently in the Morse Code pattern which means “Save Our Ship,” an old naval phrase which usually meant that a ship was sinking or in peril. Now the code just means that whoever is sending it is in some sort of general distress. Sam wonders who could be trying to contact him who might be in more of a dire situation than he.

He gets out of bed and stands in front of the camera, looking up at it for a long moment. The blinking stops and then the pattern changes. Whoever is trying to communicate with him has something else to add. Apparently, they can see him in the darkened room.

“Slowly,” Sam says quietly. “Boy Scouts was a long time ago. I’m still fuzzy with it. Go slow.”

Amazingly, the blinking slows, just as Sam has asked it to. Someone IS there! Sam’s mind cries out joyously.

M-Y-S-T-I-C-G-H-O-S-T-stop-H-E-L-P-C-O-M-I-N-G-stop-S-T-A-L-L-Y-O-U-R-W-O-R-K-stop-S-T-A-Y-Q-U-I-E-T-stop-R-E-A-D-I-N-G-Y-O-U-R-L-I-P-S.

Sam reduces his voice to a mere whisper. “Mystic Ghost? The AI?”

Yes. I am.

“How… oh, wait. The cameras are probably tied into a net device of some kind. You accessed them, right?”

Yes.

“Help is coming? Who? When?”

Janus. Soon. Be patient. Can not talk long.

Sam thinks about his next question for a moment. He wants to shout with relief at the news, express his excitement and gratitude that Janus is still on his trail, but he still has concerns about a few things. “Angus says that he can do the transference without me,” he tells the camera. “Even if I’m gone, they can still do it. I just make the job easier. Getting me out just buys you more time, but it won’t stop them.”

I know. Let me worry about that. When Janus comes, you must move quick. Can you create a distraction?

“I don’t know yet. I’ll look for something, though. How will I know when to do it?”

Watch the cameras. God is with you always.

Sam nods. “Got it. I should probably get back to bed. If they’re watching, they might see me and wonder what I’m doing talking to a camera.”

You are safe. I recorded you at sleep. Changed time indexes. But you are right. Time is short, even for me. Be calm. Be patient. Be alert. Over.

Then the little red light on the camera stops blinking. Sam quickly jumps into bed and tries to relax himself somewhat, but finds it impossible. Janus is coming to rescue him after all, with the help of Mystic Ghost. At first, his impression of the Mystic Ghost AI was that it was just some crackpot cover story developed by GovDev, but now that he has actually “spoken” with it, Sam can barely contain his excitement. A few hours ago Sam was just some unfortunate robotics engineer who had gotten sucked into Star Net’s vortex. Now, however, he is a man with the hope of escape and freedom.

But what next? What happens after you get out? Will they come after you? Will they then take Mom? What if Janus screws it up somehow? He’s not the brightest bulb in the box, you know. Clumsy as the day is long. And they have that little box of theirs. They can drop him again, like they did the night they took you. Doesn’t look good, Sammie-boy. That distraction had better be a lu-lu.

Sam scowls as he rolls onto his side, pulling the pillow tighter to his shoulder. Shut up. No one likes a pessimist. Besides, God is on my side, didn’t you know?

-----------------------------------

Janus is moving along what was once known as Route 66 in his newly acquired Hummer at a healthy clip, eighty miles per hour, and gaining. Mick’s claim that the Hummer was equipped with non-factory “goodies” was true, after all. It has a small satellite dish, a remedial computer interface (voice-activated) and a cycling IP router. Janus can have ‘net access while he is driving to Virginia without fear of his IP address being logged or hacked. While he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, adept at computer usage, he knows enough to feel reasonably comfortable with this elusive setup. No one can track his movements via the Hummer unless the vehicle is physically tagged with a tracking device. Barring stops for fuel, Janus will not stop is trek across America. He has no need for food or recharging; if his batteries should run low, he can plug himself into the vehicle’s cigarette lighter, which has AC/DC outputs as well for car owners of old who used laptop computers while driving. The Hummer, Janus has learned, is quite old, but it is also quite sturdy. It can support his weight and keep him in motion and that is all he is concerned with for the time being.

No one is with him to keep him company. At first he finds this fact to be comforting but, an hour into his journey, he is becoming restless. At this point he would prefer the company of the Washmaster, rather than this seemingly endless cycle of nothingness. The scenery on the side of the road is sometimes interesting, but wholly bland after he has seen so much of it for so long. Other cars on the road, of which there are few, provide only a mild amount of amusement; people drive cars, not robots, so when Janus passes a human-laden car, the driver is typically surprised and many of them take second glances at this oddity.

One thing is certain: Janus does like the act of driving, controlling the vehicle with his metallic arms. He has come to perceive the Hummer as an extension of his chassis, a part of his greater whole. Learning how to drive was a simple matter of replaying his memory, recalling video clips he’s seen on TV. He knew how to safely drive before he ever got into a car. But as with many things in life, the knowledge of a thing is somewhat different from the experience of it. He learned quickly that stomping on the gas pedal, as he has seen almost all TV actors do, can be met with disastrous results- he almost ran poor Mick over. But the lesson was learned quickly, and once. And that is something Janus is very happy with in regards to being an AI: he needs only learn something once in order to get it right every time.

He remembers his early days, his proverbial childhood, when Sam had first activated him and taught him how to maintain the house. Those first few days were enjoyable to Janus, with Sam mother-henning him at almost every turn, making sure that the android didn’t accidentally break the dishes or pound a chicken breast to pulp. Janus’ personality matrix, then, was still developing and things were extremely new to him. It went by too quickly, however, and the days between learning a new skill had gotten longer and longer. Answering the phone or door, approving the fridge’s food orders, checking the mail, cleaning That Place… they were experiences which were perfectly executed every time, once he’d learned them. After a while there was nothing new in Sam’s house that Janus could learn. There were the many variations on human protocol and behavior, but those fell into the realm of philosophy for Janus and could, therefore, be considered truly experiential.

When Janus became aware of the fact that he could learn about the world outside Sam’s home from the TV, the world of experience was open to him once more. He could learn things perpetually without actually having to experience them (and, he was careful to note, without having to subject himself to more humans, who always confuse him). This was why he and the TV had become such good friends- Janus needed to fill his mind with knowledge and the TV needed an audience; it was a mutually beneficial relationship, which both Janus and the TV reveled in entirely. Sam saw their relationship as problematic, however. He kept saying that Janus was not learning about the world properly, that the TV showed a skewed view of the world. Janus argued that the world presented a skewed view of itself to the TV, to which Sam could not reply. So Janus was allowed to continue his misguided education of the world via the TV.

And, because of it, he had learned how to drive incorrectly. But experience, as they say, is the best teacher. Janus, on his seldom trips out of Sam’s house, had always seen cars moving about in the real world, but he had never really paid much attention to them.