“Yes, sir. Right away, ma’am.”
President. Felicity wonders how many lives she’ll be able to touch. How many minds she’ll be able to enrich. How many people will show up to cheer her on at her inauguration, and if any one of them will object when she breaks into a soulful rendition of the South African national anthem as soon as she’s sworn in.
Councilperson Felicity Stoker hums a few bars to herself, then settles back to her desk for a hard day’s work.
Chapter 57
Muzi
Muzibot dims his mono-eye as he and Elkin slither through the night. They keep close to the walls and cling to only the darkest of shadows as they approach the abandoned ZenGen Industries building. Security guards still swarm about, but Muzibot and Elkin crave adventure. It’s not natural to go from saving the world to being cooped up in a bedroom twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the past six months. The streets aren’t safe for bots right now, with stringent curfews, license checks, and mandatory artificial intelligence testing. Violating any one of those three is punishable by immediate decommissioning, and here Muzibot is sentient as all hell, in the middle of the night, with his serial-numbered parts patchworked together from a dozen different bots that had been reported stolen. That’s all that had been left after Sydney had gotten through with him, but it was enough for him to escape with his life.
Muzibot’s got a plan, though, since he’s not about to live out the rest of his days as a third-class citizen. The risks are great, but so is the payoff.
Elkin raises his hand, and they stop and crouch, pressing deeper into the shadows as a small security detail passes. Muzibot catches himself trying to hold his nonexistent breath. Muzibot loves seeing Elkin so passionate about something. It’s been hard for him, too, being stuck in Muzi’s skin, living under Muzi’s roof, trying to pass for someone he’s not. Having to deal with Papa Fuzz. Elkin does have fun screwing with him, though, hiding his keys, charging random things to his credit cards, running his obituary in the paper every other week or so. What else does the kid have to do to keep busy? The rugby season got canceled while the city focused its efforts on cleanup and recovery. His cousin Rife stopped dealing, and probably worst of all, Riya Natrajan pressed pause on her singing career so she could concentrate on being a mom.
“All clear,” Elkin whispers. They wind their way around to the side door, and Elkin pops the cover on the security access panel. “I’ll crack the access codes and you hack into security and see if you can get us a safe path into the lab.”
Muzibot flashes the subtlest shade of affirmation, then extends one of his arms and ports into the panel. Within a few seconds he’s commandeered all the video cameras, has located all the guards, and has downloaded the blueprints that will get them to the third subbasement where all the supersecret research goes on. Elkin pats him on his dome, and the warmth spreads through Muzibot’s CPU.
Then they’re inside, hustling down corridors, walking through high-security checkpoints like they’re beaded curtains. The quiet emptiness is starting to get to Muzibot, like the ghosts of those mauled scientists and experiments gone wrong are now watching. He starts humming to himself, which is more like tonal MIDI beeps, of what might be Riya Natrajan’s last number one hit—“Midnight Seersucker.”
Elkin spins around. “Would you stop that?”
“What? It’s a catchy tune.”
“You know why.”
“Elkin, please. So she quit touring. It’s not like she’s given up singing altogether. Besides, you’re practically related to her now. We’ll see her all the time!”
“It’s not the same. What if her music is different? What if she’s changed?” Elkin sighs, then resumes the trek into the bowels of ZenGen Industries.
“Holy hell, I hope she’s changed! After all she’s been through. I hope we’re all changed.” Muzibot’s circuits start to itch. That happens when he’s annoyed, which happens a lot now, especially when the subject of Riya and Elkin’s cousin’s engagement comes up. Elkin always blocks him out. They talk for days and days about any other subject, their minds both operating on a higher plane, but Muzibot’s not going to run away from it this time.
“You’re jealous of Rife, aren’t you? He’s got the hottest woman on the planet, and you’ve got a pile of scrap and wires with my brain stuck inside.”
Elkin huffs. “I’d take tin over plastic any day.”
“Then what is it?”
Elkin shakes his head. “Her music was only music to you. You’ll never understand.”
Muzibot leaves it at that. For now. He switches his focus back to locating the lab in subbasement three, where he’ll reclaim his body by using their instrumentation to create a clone husk to house him. Well, not his body. Having two Muzis walking around would be odd, even for him. And besides, Mr. Tau owes them big-time for saving humanity, and if they ever run into him again, they’ll guilt him into a body swap. But for now, Elkin will be Muzi, and Muzi will be Elkin . . . more or less.
Muzibot opens his bottom compartment and takes out bloodied hairs, still connected to the tissue of Elkin’s old scalp. Elkin goes to work to prepare the sample, sitting at ZenGen’s patented biodiffuser like he’s operated one all his life, DNA mapping as simple as a child’s twelve-piece puzzle. His genome becomes a three-dimensional representation on a virtual screen.
“Easy as pie,” Muzibot says. “Let’s get this sucker cloned.”
“Not so fast, guy,” Elkin says. “I’ve got some modifications in mind. Heightened vision and smell. Denser bones and greater muscle mass. Lightning-quick reflexes. Think of the advantage you’ll have on the rugby pitch.”
“Honestly, you’ve learned absolutely nothing about tampering with nature?”
“I could make you hung like a rhino. Circumcised or not. Your choice.”
“Elkin, you’re a piece of work, you know that?”
“Are you . . . blushing?”
“Bots don’t blush,” Muzibot snaps. “Now hurry up. My hacks won’t fool those dofs forever.”
“I’ll take that as an affirmative,” Elkin says, then like Michelangelo with a flawless slab of marble, he begins work on his masterpiece.
That happens to be himself.
Chapter 58
Nomvula
Nomvula knocks softly on her mother’s door, hot tears streaking down her cheeks. She had the nightmare again, the one where she’s trapped under tons and tons of rocks, fire blazing her skin. The one where Sydney’s laugh echoes all around her, screaming that she isn’t dead, only waiting for revenge to claim what’s hers. Nomvula often dreams of the dead, but she hates this dream the most because it haunts not only her past, but her future, too.
“Ma?” Nomvula whimpers. The word still tastes funny in her mouth, but it feels right enough in her heart.