Chapter 1

Androids Are Just Machines

I don’t like killing androids, Amilyn Marx thought while standing amid the result of her action-to-the-contrary.

Five-and-a-half smoldering Cortel model 1H androids lay in a semicircle around her. The leaking coolant-conductor from their shattered CPU cases filled the air with a smell of both ammonia and burning caramel. The year-old poster for a Scott Lee concert — disrespectfully pasted over a wall-sized, bright graffito image of “Genius Merman, Leonardo da Vinci” — was splattered pinkish-brown with freshly sprayed android fluids and melted bits of bio-polymer skin. The light mist of foggy rain was insufficient to wash it off.

“Post-action team on Grattan, turning onto Park. ETA two minutes,” Amilyn heard loud and clear via her embedded comm.

Two minutes can be a long time for an android with nothing to do. Amilyn looked around, cataloging what she could without straying from her location. The former pumping station immediately behind her was a three-story tall, windowless, brick box with a handful of loading bays on its street side. The flood wall beside her was covered in layer upon layer of graffiti — the exception being the featured deference given the Leonardo piece. Looking to the north, though two bridges interfered with her view, she saw the south leg of the stainless steel Gateway Arch. She heard, to the south, the metal-on-metal screeching of a nearby slow locomotive negotiating with inertia.

Focusing once again on the results of her work; she thought one thing: I don’t like killing androids.

Being an android herself, Amilyn wasn’t allowed to have a say in the matter. She was given an assignment by Cortel, or whoever leased her, and she was expected to carry it out. Twenty-two years before, Cortel, the unified mega-conglomerate, took over the bulk of the job of running the world after governments proved themselves unable to manage the planet on their own. The complex social politics that emerged afterward fed this android’s vocation. Kidnappings became a relatively common recruiting method, targeting people with desirable skills who hadn’t yet contracted themselves to a protective organization. Both Cortel and its junior symbiont/competitor, Dar-Mar, made generous use of androids to both capture and protect key assets.

In the five years since her activation, many of Amilyn’s assignments were in asset security. Because of her drive to successfully complete missions, AM-1L-YN had rendered a large number of other androids inoperable. As she looked at the bodies near her, Amilyn reminded herself that, technically, they weren’t her own kind. Yes, they were androids, but they were the ubiquitous 1H model while she was of the most recent 1L design. More than that, and something that she struggled with, was the fact that she wasn’t just a machine. She thought. She wondered. She had curiosity. She knew who she was and what she was.

From her experience interacting with other androids, even the few of her own line whose paths she crossed, it was clear that none did any of that sort of questioning or self-examination. They were machines, and that was all they were ever going to be. Well…scrap, when necessary, but otherwise they were nothing more than glorified levers.

Even so, those machines were still built like her. They had the same sorts of components. They were all created by humans — at least, the critical parts were. They were all artificial constructs built by the only company permitted to make androids: Cortel. So, it wasn’t a stretch for her to think of the human-looking automatons she’d turned into heaps of scrap as her relatives. She hated killing androids.

Two dark gray Cortel vehicles rounded the breach in the street-art covered wall, their headlight beams brightly tunneling through the mist. A discretely-logoed box van curled around and backed up so its rear doors were positioned near the fallen machines. A passenger van sporting the Cortel “lined peacock” logo pulled up close to Amilyn. Two 1H androids stepped from the van along with Arron Kent, a thirty-eight-year-old man with thinning blond hair. Kent didn’t look like the other station managers now loading dead androids into the larger truck. They wore full-body suits or blue, knee-length coats. Kent wore a vintage fleece “hoodie”. He said, “Ami, what’s your status?”

“No anomalies,” she replied. “It did take me seven shots to down them all.”

“Seven? What happened?”

“The fifth 1H I targeted pushed off of the fourth just as I pressed the trigger. It shifted the fourth 1H enough that I missed the CPU. I didn’t miss afterward.”

“And the half 1H?”

“That was the fifth target. I didn’t know it had an explosive device installed.”

Kent nodded. “I see. So he blew up when you hit him?”

“No. After. By approximately three-tenths of a second; suggesting a ‘dead-man’ scenario should his operations cease.”

Kent scribbled something on his paper memo pad. “Anything else?”

“No. All protocols were followed. The asset was secured eleven minutes ago.”

“Excellent,” Kent said without enthusiasm. “Go wait in the van. We’ll be heading home soon.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Amilyn walked efficiently to the van and assumed her usual seat behind the driver. Though her software told her to obey human orders without question, she increasingly bristled at them as the years passed. She never forgot the reality of her situation. Her world was one where androids were often either wiped & repurposed, or “slagged” for scrap. Her survival depended on maintaining the illusion of being nothing more than a machine — a machine that carried out its orders.

The general public would have been surprised at the facility Cortel used to house and maintain the Chicago-based androids: the slightly modified Commodor Hotel. Once an exclusive four-star venue famous for its celebrity guests, its stream of clientele all but dried up following the Global Economic Collapse over forty years before. It remained unused for years after Cortel imposed the DEER Plan that resulted in a glut of global foreclosures.

When the 1G model was released, robotics researchers suggested repurposing the hotel as an immersion base for android training in the Great Lakes region. They said it would help the already realistic 1G model to be accepted as replacements for people in the sexual marketplace. The corporate suits thought it was a waste of assets, but agreed to a test run. It wasn’t long before the results opened their eyes.

The androids coming from this base, initially 1Gs plus some 1H prototypes, were 26% more effective in integrating with the public. On their own, 1Gs were judged to be more desirable than the experimental “entertainment” versions of prior models. Unlike other hominin-form robots, their appearance and movements didn’t make the average person anxious due to subtle deviations from human norms; they’d crossed the “uncanny valley” and ceased being “u-val”. The simulated immersion found in the dorm-like culture of the hotel added to that foundation and helped with real-world integration. These androids were accepted so readily that the consensual entertainment business in the region experienced unprecedented growth. Android training centers soon popped up around the globe.

As Amilyn took the open-cage elevator up to the third floor, she passed by a line of a dozen assorted models on their way down the iron-banistered staircase to the reassignment station in what was once the underground parking garage. Her eyes met those of another female 1L android. Without conscious control, Amilyn’s gaze locked in. She saw awareness staring back at her followed by mutual recognition of that quality. The elevator’s ascent caused the passing floor to sever their unexpected connection.

Amilyn entered her suite, number 306. Once inside, she thought, That android was aware. I don’t know how I know that, but I do. There is at least one other out there like me.

Her pause was outwardly imperceptible. She was keenly aware of always being monitored. As with the others stationed here, her performance was constantly evaluated and compared to people living in similar circumstances. She was expected to nominally behave like a human, even when alone, unless exigent circumstances required her to do otherwise. Since she wasn’t like the others, she also had to maintain the facade of acting only through the 1L’s “conventionally adaptive artificial intelligence”. Pausing for a thoughtful interlude would attract the sort of attention that would lead first to the lab and then to the scrap heap.

I’m not alone, was the new mantra running through her mind. In the five years, one month, and twenty-nine days since her activation, there was one constant in her life: she was the only android (or computing device of any kind) she knew of that was self-aware. Manufacturing problems with her 1L model led to delays and eventual cancellation after the first and only run of 676 units. Over the years, Amilyn had worked with five other 1Ls, all of which were predictably non-sentient. She had come to accept being unique. Consequently, she never expected another pair of eyes to stare back at her in the same way the ones in her mirror did.

After taking a shower and changing into casual sleepwear, Amilyn reclined on the couch. Using a tablet, she read a few chapters of a novel at human speed. This gave her large pockets of time between words to think. I’m nearly certain she was a 1L model. Is that why they shut down the line, because we were violating Cortel Internal Directive 0200225-23JA? (Following the tragic events caused by the now-scrapped, semi-sentient 1E drones, limits to machine intelligence and autonomy were put in place.) Amilyn loaded a new page and scanned it in. No. If my capabilities were suspected, I’d have been summarily destroyed. The same would be true of her. I hope I cross paths with her in the field. She likely has as many questions as I do about our situation.

Amilyn yawned and put the story on the end table next to her. She turned out the floor lamp and went to the bedroom. Once in bed and simulating sleep, her mind started to wander. If that other android and I are both self-aware, does the application of the verb ‘to lie’ change? In present tense, a human will lie down while an object such as an android will lay down, as per human instruction. But since I…we…have choice in the matter and do not require prior human guidance as a condition, do we now lie instead of lay, in contrast to the 1Hs I deactivated earlier and subsequently laid on the ground?

The hours of simulated sleep provided ample time to process information, so she considered other subtleties of human language. Amilyn found that as her experience grew, the problem of associating language with actions and intents became slipperier. It wasn’t like with machine-to-machine communication, which had few ambiguities — though the protocols that evolved from pre-coherent language codes were sometimes quite troublesome. Even so, they didn’t consume her nights like analyzing human language did. Trying to translate between two or more languages only made it worse, since getting help was problematic. It frustrated her that she needed to limit the number of questions she asked so they’d fall within the same range as the other machines in the dorm. Knowledge was power, but survival mattered more.

Excerpt from Android Me by CJ Carter