I, Robot To Protect

“No!” Susan shouted again. She tried to turn, tripped, and sprawled, rolling across the concrete. She could feel the skin sloughing off her hands, the fabric of her pants abrading from her knees. Then, suddenly, a roar reverberated through her head. A wall of heat slammed her against the building with bruising force, and she could feel small, hard objects raining down around her. Fire washed over her. It felt as if it burned every part of of her, through her clothing and skin, into her internal organs. The taste of gasoline filled her mouth like physical pain. Then, cold air gripped her, quenching the fire. She raised her head, bashing it against brick. Pain shot through her skull; then black oblivion descended upon her.

Susan Calvin awakened to the familiar sounds of a hospital room: the steady beep of a monitored bed, the rumble of the central air system, and the muffled sounds of distant conversation. She sat up too quickly. Dizziness swam down on her, and the room disappeared in a swirl of tiny black and white spots. She sank back to what she now recognized as a bed. Her vision gradually returned, first as a fine blur, then as distinct shapes. A screen traced her heart rate, breathing, and oxygenation. Someone tall slumped in a chair in a far corner of the room, his head clamped firmly between his hands.

“Dad?” Susan guessed, sitting up more carefully. “Is that you?”

The figure in the chair straightened. It was indeed John Calvin who rose to his full six feet eight inches and hurried to Susan’s bedside. “You’re awake.”

“Only just,” she admitted, pulling her hands from under the covers. They felt enormous and awkward, and she realized they were swathed in bandages. “How long have I been asleep?”

“Two days, in and out. We’ve had this conversation before. Don’t you remember?” He tapped a button on his Vox.

Susan shook her head. I don’t remember anything after —” Terror shot through her. “Remy?” She gave her father a desperate, hopeful look.

John Calvin shook his head with slow and weary sadness. He had that same, broken stance he assumed whenever the topic of Susan’s mother arose. “He died a hero. If he hadn’t thrown himself over the bomb, you certainly would have been killed. And, probably, several more innocents.”

Susan felt as if the air had suddenly been sucked from the room. Instantly, tears filled her eyes, splashing down her cheeks, and sobs racked her mercilessly. She could not breathe, wasn’t sure she wanted to ever again.

Gingerly, John wrapped his arms around his daughter.

Susan barely noticed. She felt cocooned in the depths of unbearable grief, an emotion that seemed destined to overwhelm her for eternity. No longer hearing the steady blips of the monitor, she was certain her heart had solidified into an unreachable boulder.

They remained enfolded together for what seemed like hours, until Susan’s eyes felt on fire and her muscles became exhausted from the spasms. Lost and hopeless, she lay still in her father’s strong arms and dared not contemplate the future.

John seemed to sense when she could hear him again. Either that, or she had simply missed everything he had said until that moment. “Susan, it wasn’t supposed to go like this. The idea was to shield you and Remy from danger, to place the burden on the corporation.”

The words seemed nonsensical to Susan, but she found herself unable to voice any opinion. Her throat felt raw with sorrow.

“When you suggested a smallish mall far from the downtown area, Lawrence deliberately sent you there to keep you busy and out of harm’s way. None of us believed she would go there. We were sure the programming would send her to a larger, more newsworthy target.”

Susan could only nod. The employees of USR had relied on logic and science. She alone had believed in the power of the psyche of a tiny sociopath; this time, she had not underestimated Sharicka Anson. Lawrence had done a stellar job convincing Susan he trusted her idea. She supposed the fact that he should have done so made the task simpler.

“I’m sorry, Susan.” John’s voice hoarsened. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

Now, it was Susan’s turn to comfort her father. She did not blame him for Remington’s death. To fault anyone else was to belittle his sacrifice, to lessen the courage it had taken for him to forfeit his life to save so many others. “Dad, I’m not religious enough to believe everything happens for a reason, but I am scientific enough to know things that have happened cannot be undone.” She remembered Remington’s words at USR, the ones he used to soothe her while she blamed herself for Misty Anson’s death. “Life is full of hard choices. When they’re made intelligently and with all the best intentions, we must accept the results, whether or not they’re what we expect, what we want, or something entirely different.”

“But I feel responsible for Remy’s death, for your suffering. If I hadn’t convinced you not to call —”

Susan did not allow him to finish. “People still would have died, many more of them. I don’t believe law enforcement could have acted any quicker than we did, and no one would have thought of going to Knickerbocker Mall. With the pressure off me and on the police, I know I wouldn’t have. You’d probably be in jail, along with several other blameless scientists, and robotic technology would have been set back fifty years, a century, maybe indefinitely.” Susan’s words reached home, as comforting to her as to her father. “Nate would have been erased, and hundreds of people at the mall would have died needlessly instead of . . .” She paused. “What was the actual death count?”

“Three,” John said. “Remy, a security guard, and the girl. A dozen in the hospital, but no one worse off than you.”

Her father’s words struck a note of terror that Susan would not have believed possible. If she still worried for her life and her future, then she would survive her grief, would find some way to limp through the rest of her life without the man she had come to love so absolutely, so quickly. “Dad, am I going to be okay?”

John Calvin managed an actual smile. “You’re going to be just fine, kitten. Your hands are expected to heal fully. You have minor burns and bruises only. Nothing life threatening. They’re already talking discharge.”

Thanks to Remy. Pain seared Susan’s heart. If she had believed in a higher power, her faith would have died in that moment. No superior being worth worshiping would bring a man like Remington Hawthorn into her life, only to place him in a situation where he had to die to save her. If he hadn’t done what he did, we would both be dead. “And the people responsible? The ones who reprogrammed the nanorobots? Has anyone caught them?”

John Calvin turned Susan a wan smile, betrayed by the deep sigh he heaved at the same time. “We’re still sorting it all out, but we’re hopeful. The SFH has always been dangerous. Now, they’ve apparently managed to recruit accomplished scientists and experienced international terrorists. The men who made the physical switch worked for the delivery company. At least, they’re in custody, and we hope they’ll give up the others. Making the connection between them and the Society for Humanity will probably prove a lot more difficult.”

Susan nodded grimly.

“We won’t give up, though,” John promised.

Nor will they. Susan guessed the Society for Humanity would have all the tenacity of most extremists. No matter how worthy the cause, those people who took it to irrational lengths always ruined it for the true and sanely passionate believers. Such were antiabortion extremists who murdered doctors and misrepresented beloved stillborn infants as aborted embryos; environmental extremists who slaughtered scientists, blew up corporations, and stole credit cards to finance their radical agendas; extremists on both sides of the political aisle who threatened federal buildings and workers, vandalized property, and fomented lies when elections did not go their way; radical Islamists who daily fired rockets into Israel, demonized civilization, demoralized women, and declared war on every religion not their own.

The Society for Humanity would not give up the fight until certain branches of science disappeared from existence. Individual victories would never suffice. They would not rest until the things of which they disapproved wholly perished from the earth, and they did not care whom they damaged, whom they murdered, to achieve that goal.

History had proven only one way to handle terrorists, Susan believed, and that was to defeat them. In the past, when one side wanted only peace and the other would settle for nothing less than total annihilation of the other, the side wishing for peace was the one that had to survive, the one that deserved to triumph. When extremists won, they did not quietly disappear; they did not embrace peace. They simply turned their might onto a