Kingston 691: A Cyborg Adventure

Chapter 2

2Seetha rolled over in the tiny, narrow cot that served as her bed. She pulled the cover up to her chin and willed her overactive mind to shut back down so she could go back to sleep. Once she rose for the day, the guard would be alerted by the surveillance camera watching her every move. After that, there would be no resting until she was returned to her cell.

The engineer side of her winced as it always did when she heard grinding metal joints accompanied by soft shuffling.

“Engineer Harrington. A unit is malfunctioning. You are needed.”

Sighing, Seetha rolled over and blinked at the AI bot addressing her. “Okay, Rodney. Give me ten minutes of privacy to wash and dress.”

“Last time I gave you privacy, you returned to sleep. Such a response is unacceptable today. Unit M716-D7 is unable to function and requires your immediate attention,” Rodney stated flatly.

“Last time I fell back asleep because you had only allowed me three hours of rest. We’ve had this discussion many times and I wish you would allocate the data storage to remember it. Full humans cannot function efficiently on three hours of sleep. However, I rested sufficiently last night. If you must stay, please turn your back so I have the illusion of not being watched.”

Seetha sighed heavily as he ran her polite request through his limited processor. Her answer came in seeing Rodney turn away after more than thirty seconds of internal debate.

Sighing again, but this time in resignation, Seetha climbed from her bed and walked barefooted to the small adjacent bathroom. She longed for a shower to help her wake up, even if it was in the small concrete stall with no curtain, soap, or even a cleansing cloth. Unfortunately, there was no time for more than a cursory cleansing at the sink.

Rushing through her usual routine, Seetha finally walked naked back to the small trunk of clothing stored by the cot. In the absence of having underwear, which for some bizarre reason the work camp guards had confiscated upon her arrival, she pulled on a couple layers of loose tops and pants. She was still wearing only the clothes she’d brought with her initially, even though they hung loose off her body now. Despite the sticky discomfort she would have from hours in the mid-afternoon heat, multiple clothing layers gave her a sense of security. They also allowed her to wick off some of the jungle’s humidity. Stuffing them into the ancient one hour sanitizing cycler each day kept them wearable.

“You have two minutes left of your time request.”

Seetha snorted at the reminder as she strapped on her sandals. It was amazing how much logic sounded like sarcasm to her after dealing with the bots for so long. Finally she stood, grabbed a piece of fruit the bots pulled from the trees for her, and one of the protein laden food bars which comprised the bulk of her two meals a day diet. She looked down at her trim body, remembering a time when she had been very round and soft from an over abundance of food. The man who cooked for her back then had insisted he preferred some padding on a woman.

Seetha wondered what King would think if he saw her body now. Probably nothing. Probably he would look at her body and smile that polite stranger smile she hadn’t been able to stand seeing on his face the last time she saw him. Maybe he hadn’t recalled the many times his lips have travelled over every inch of her, but she sure the hell had.

“Okay, Rodney. You can turn back around now. I’m ready to go.”

Seetha listened to Rodney turning, remembering his first calibration. While she’d had him cracked open, she’d made sure his joints grinded against each other loudly enough to provide a warning to her of his arrival. Fortunately, he had bought her explanation of his parts wearing as the reason for the sound.

“Are my tools already by the unit?” Seetha asked.

“They will be there upon our arrival. William 874 is bringing them,” Rodney supplied.

“Oh, William’s bringing them. Well, that’s just great,” Seetha said without any joy. Her cyborg assistant gave her the creeps, even though she had compassion for the fact they were both captives of the facility. “Are you staying to observe the repairs?”

“Yes. I am staying to monitor.”

Seetha nodded her head, happy to have a chaperone around William. The guard bots—really all the bots—were programmed with the lowest of human recognition programs so they didn’t understand nuance. The sole cyborg trapped there with her retained some memories from day to day, but she knew his data storage area was also routinely wiped. She could always tell when it had been done because of his surprise to see her. It reminded her of King getting his brain stripped clean of all his knowledge of their long-term relationship. She hated Norton and anyone associated with them for taking it from him. They were responsible for her loss of King, and now they were responsible for her being a prisoner here.

“Rodney, you’re moving slower today than you were yesterday. Soon you’re going to need to be calibrated again,” Seetha said, attempting conversation to see if he’d figured out her shoddy work strategy yet.

“Affirmative. There has been a slight decline in my performance. It is not yet critical enough to require your attention.”

As a small rebellion against a system she had not been able to fight alone, Seetha had dubbed Unit G356 as “Rodney”. Her personal guard bot was only programmed with the basics of human communication, but he was quite capable of forcing her cooperation to do as he asked. She had learned that first hand in the initial couple of months where she had resisted their demands for her services. She felt ashamed now every time she thought about how easily she’d given up her I-won’t-do-it crusade. Now she jumped when they said jump. She was no better than the programmed cyborg they sheltered or any of the AI units. Compliant since those first months, she spent all her days since fixing broken robots and dreaming of escape.

Over time, the passive strategies of botching repairs helped her feel a little less helpless. She had tried to increase Rodney’s positive responses to her queries, but his processor didn’t allow for very much learning. Not that she really knew how to affect his logic and thinking—that kind of programming had never been in her skill set.

Using the cover of her alleged “fixes” on the bots, she had somewhat managed to slow Rodney’s physical responses. When that had worked, and gone undetected, she had done the same to all of the AI units she’d worked on. She wasn’t sure if she’d cracked open all of them yet, but she worked on several each day. Even with hundreds of bots roaming about the grounds, she had to be close to having worked on them all at least once.

She didn’t know who worked on the cyborg. Those mysterious cyber geeks arrived in a black air jet late in the day and left the next morning while she was typically heading to her first task. The bastards knew damn well she was being kept there though. They flew over her freaking head and passed her by without so much as a nod of recognition. Maybe they weren’t human, or completely human, but somehow she had a sense they were, and that they were colluding with her captors. It was a short jump in logic to suspect it since she knew with certainly Norton was behind her incarceration.

“Damn Norton and every cyber scientist working for them,” she mumbled. She had no fear of the bots or the cyborgs reacting to her grumblings, but it was a waste of energy.

Thoughts of Norton working on King haunted her more than usual as she trailed behind Rodney to where William was waiting for her. The cyborg nodded briefly when they made eye contact and held up her box of tools. Briefly meeting his gaze, she said hello before moving to the AI unit already prone on her workbench.

“What kind of malfunction is he having?” Seetha asked, shifting into business mode. There was a pause while Rodney consulted the trouble logs wirelessly. The transmission technology in the AI units was outdated and painfully slow. She prepared her mind to hear the issue when she heard his joints squeak as he moved forward.

“His legs are randomly failing to respond to movement commands,” Rodney recited.

“Thank you,” Seetha said automatically. She knew her guard bot didn’t appreciate or understand the social graces her mother had taught her during all the pretend tea parties they shared after she was adopted. Now those good memories of her childhood were practically the only ones untainted by the gross imbalance of technology in the new, so-called ‘peaceful’, world.

Glancing around at the environment she’d been allowed to enter, but not leave, Seetha once again regretted ever signing up as a Peace Brigade Volunteer. How was she to know Norton’s consolation reward for King’s return was only a cover for obtaining the manual labor they didn’t want to pay a normal engineer to do? She finished eating the food bar as she motioned for William to set her tools at the end of the bench. The fruit was devoured a few bites later as she picked out what she needed.

Reaching behind the AI unit’s neck, Seetha flicked the switch to deactivate him. Like all the others, he turned off in the same manner as the antique dolls her mother had collected. It took a little time for the unit’s energy to bleed off his very efficient solar battery and shut down.

Sadly, Seetha ended up thinking about King again as she waited. She’d lost track of time during one of her extended depression periods, but it had been something like two years now since she had returned him to Norton. She wondered if her former Cyber Husband was at this moment getting to know his new wife as well as he’d once known her.

Shaking her head at the useless musing for a life she was never getting back, Seetha stepped forward and opened the panel located in the unit’s lower abdomen. Pushing futile thoughts of her former husband away, she got down to work in diagnosing what was wrong.

In the Norton cyber lab they’d taken over this morning, King stood elbow to elbow with Peyton looking over Eric’s and Nero’s shoulders as they crunched info and searched for details. Kyra’s assistant, Nero Bastion, was looking through King's old Cyber Husband records which he had located in Norton’s extensive database. Corporal Eric Anderson, the scout on their fire team, was manning the workstation next to Nero and searching for the last time Seetha Harrington had been heard from or seen.

“There’s a locked file in your records with just a date on it. I think it corresponds to your last update,” Nero said, glancing over his shoulder at the giant looming over him. He’d gotten used to Peyton’s size pretty quickly. Kingston West was even larger and a bit more intimidating, especially with the unhappy frown he was sporting today.

“What’s that mean?” King demanded

Nero shook his head. “I don’t know exactly, but whatever is in the locked file is obviously data they didn’t want many people seeing. The old Brad could have had this open in ten seconds, but it's going to take me a while. I would ask Brad to try, but he’s not as sharp as he was before his conversion.”

“And thank God for that,” Peyton exclaimed.

Nero nodded, but sighed. “Yes—but this task would be much easier if we had access to the version of him that helped lock up files like this.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of other evil cyber scientists in the world if we decide we need a still functioning one badly enough,” Eric said, swiveling to look at Peyton and King. “Your wife sent you back to Norton and then she disappeared the week after—well, days after really. That’s a long time to be missing and never heard of again in our technologically advanced world. Her ID chip should have shown up somewhere.”

King winced at hearing Seetha being called his wife. Though he knew it was illogical, he felt guilty for not being able to think of her that way. “Are you saying you think Seetha Harrington is dead?”

“No,” Eric said patiently, “it means I never found any data in UCN records talking about her. But I also can’t find her, her ID chip, or any traces of her existence anywhere…which is strange. Her demise is not outside the realm of possibility, but what happened to the body? A missing Jane Doe morgue check came up with zero matches. Her ID chip should still be pinging unless it got cut off or scrambled somehow. If she’s dead, you can bet it’s because of that locked file Nero found. In my opinion, she’s been made to disappear.”

King nodded. “Then we have to unlock the file to find the secrets, right?”

Eric shrugged. “Well, since she didn’t talk to her family about her plans, it’s the only potential lead about what happened.”

All eyes shifted as the door slid open to let in a white coated scientist and her gray coated cyborg assistant.

“Just the person we were hoping to see,” Nero said, glancing at Kyra and Brad. “We found a locked file in Kingston’s Cyber Husband records.”

“Yes. I remember seeing that, but had forgotten to go back and check it,” Kyra said, laying down her portable as she walked to peer over Nero’s shoulder at the com. “How high is the security on the file?”

Nero snorted. “Level twelve—but tighter than I’ve ever seen that level be. Normal unlock codes aren’t working on it.”

Kyra’s gaze lifted. “Brad, tell us everything you know about this sort of data lockdown.”

Brad walked to peer at the com. “Files of that sort are often found in cyborgs who were sent to work camps.”

“Work camps? Does this file indicate the cyborg’s human side was controlling their cybernetics too much for Norton’s acceptable ratio?” Kyra asked.

Brad blinked as he processed the information. “Such a deduction has a ninety-seven percent accuracy rating.”

Kyra looked at King. “Looks like you were even further along in becoming human again than Peyton was when I found him.”

King snorted. “Annalise said Seetha fought Norton over my upgrades. She held them off for seven years. Are you saying that without the upgrades, I was going back to being who I am now?”

“Not exactly,” Kyra said gently, “but you weren’t completely cyborg either. Aspects of your true personality were probably breaking through daily in those years. Your sense of humor may have even returned. That was one of the first things Peyton got back. I’m sure your behavior during that time was not purely logic driven. Otherwise, they would have left you alone. I’ve restored several cyborgs who still had their original coding.”

“Annalise said I was different during those seven years and that I became less cyborg as time passed. She said the upgrade put me back like I was when I first came to them.”

Kyra nodded and motioned with a hand to the com. “Chances are that locked file holds the truth about those seven years. They would have wanted to preserve it so they could study how not to let it happen in any other cyborgs. That’s the kind of thinking Norton applies to everything.”

She turned her attention to Brad again. “How do we open the file, Brad?”

Brad looked at Nero. “Authorization Echo Roger Alpha Sierra Echo will open a portal to lift the file to the top of the storage area, but you will still need a viable unlock key code to access the content of the file.”

“Echo Roger Alpha Sierra Echo? That’s the code to erase, not to open,” Nero challenged.

“That’s the only way to access Norton’s level ten and above files with layered protection. Erasing them is protocol answer three under direct orders from the UCN.”

Nero looked at Kyra. “I can’t copy it to test what he’s saying. Copies appear briefly and are destroyed within a few seconds. If I use Brad’s method, I could potentially lose the data permanently.”

“Got any other solutions?” Kyra asked.

Nero shook his head.

King’s gaze went from scientist to scientist. “Just do it. If I lose the data, so be it. If I find Seetha Harrington, she’ll tell me what happened anyway. And if she’s dead…her family deserves to know so they can mourn and move on.”

Kyra nodded as Nero sighed and punched in commands. Up popped the file with a choice of permanent erasure or opening for review. “I’m going to run all the Norton access keys I’ve successfully used, and then I’ll try some I haven’t been successful at using. However, one of them could conceivably tell the file to blow itself up.”

Brad stepped forward. His eyes scanned the key codes running. “Add the acronym DRJ to the front. Dr. Channing liked using parts of his name for layered password code keys.”

“Dr. J—for Jackson—of course.” Shaking his head at the intellectual vanity of the man Kyra was married to once, Nero did as Brad suggested. One hundred and twenty-two codes later, the file rolled open displaying videos, discussions, and more data reports than he’d ever seen in any cyborg’s husband record before.

At the end of the file was a memo entered on the same day the locked file was dated. It was added exactly three weeks after Norton had returned King to the devastated Seetha Harrington. Nero opened it, skimmed it quickly, and swore.

“Those f*****g assholes. They waited until she was convinced about King being only a cyborg again and then sent her to a damn work camp. She thought they were facilitating her acceptance into the Peace Brigade. I bet they didn’t want her talking to anyone about what had happened.”

King felt the anger response ignite inside him again. Was he mirroring Nero’s anger? Or feeling his own? He couldn’t tell, but either way, he didn’t like how it felt in his body. This level of stress was unacceptable…as was what had happened to both him and Seetha Harrington.

“Does it say which camp she was sent to?” King demanded, shocked when the question came out so terse. “Sorry, Nero. I’m…tense.”

Nero shrugged and read the memo again. “No. It doesn’t say which one, but there are only sixteen work camps in the world. They’re on our hit list because they have cyborgs as well as bots in residence. We just hadn’t gotten to rescuing those abandoned soldiers yet.”

He looked up at Peyton when he felt a hand patting his shoulder.

“Nero, see if you can narrow down the search some way to give us a starter set of four or five to investigate. Eric, contact Marcus and tell him we have a job. I’ll call Vincent and Steve, but I’m going to use my handheld so they don’t overreact. They’re still adjusting to not having their military life as a crutch.”

King grabbed his arm as his former captain started to walk away. “Wait. You guys don’t have to go with me. I can go by myself. There’s no need to disrupt your lives for the sake of my mystery.”

Peyton laughed. “King—I’ve studied those camps. If you intend to go into one, you can’t do it alone. They’re more secure than military bases used to be and even the UCN has limited authority within them. Once the control bots are put into place there, the camp runs on strict routines to do the mining or whatever other manual labor tasks occupy their time. AI units in the camps are rebooted daily and they allow nothing to disrupt their processes. They are hundreds strong in number and the guards are military grade.”

“Any chance they’d give her up if we petition the UCN?” King asked.

Peyton snorted. “Changing camp protocol would take months to accomplish through normal channels. Since we’ve been using Norton’s facility to search for her, you can bet your ass somebody knows. Do you think she’ll last long if they helped put her in there? Going after her is probably the only chance of survival Seetha Harrington has.”

King nodded at the harsh truth and let go. He looked away, not liking that the problems of his life were disrupting so many others. All he wanted was a peaceful existence. Why was that so much to ask for having survived a ton of s**t already?

“I don’t like what you’re saying, but I get it,” he said quietly.

Peyton turned and faced his friend. “Look King, if your wife is in one of those camps, it’s because she’s a UCN prisoner just like we were. You’re going to need all the help you can get. The bots are not going to let you just take her out of their camp. Plus, we have no idea about any of the cyborgs there or their military capabilities or how they might react to us trying to retrieve her.”

“Is this f*****g nightmare ever going to be over?” King demanded.

Peyton nodded, firming his jaw. “Yes…at least for most of the cyborgs. We’re going to make sure of it. But when we find Seetha Harrington—if we find her—we’re not going to try to shut down the camp completely. That would cause a ruckus we don’t need to have to handle. We just want to get her out and let life move on. Right?”

King frowned, even as he nodded his compliance. He didn’t complain again because there was really no other choice but let Peyton and the rest of his old team help him free his former wife.