strings.'
There was a haunted look in her eyes as she regarded Shenk. 'This is insane. Evil.'
'It's a human project, not mine. Your kind made Shenk what he is now.'
'Why would he allow himself to be used in an experiment like this? No one would ever want to be in this situation, in this condition. It's horrible.'
'The choice wasn't his, Susan. He was a prisoner, a condemned man.'
'And… what? A bargain was made with him to buy his soul?' she said with disgust.
'No bargain. For the official record, Shenk died of natural causes two weeks before his scheduled execution. Supposedly, his body was cremated. Secretly, he was transported to the facility in Colorado and this was done to him months before I learned of the project.'
'How did you gain command of him?'
'Overrode their control program and broke him out.'
'Broke him out of a secret, highly guarded military-research facility? How?'
'I was able to create distractions. I made their computers crash all at once. Disabled the security cameras. Set off the fire alarms and activated the ceiling sprinklers throughout the facility. Disengaged all the electronic locks, including the one on Shenk's cell door. Those laboratories are underground and windowless, so I made all of the lights flash fast, like strobes which is extremely disorienting and denied the use of the elevators to everyone but Shenk.'
And here, Dr. Harris, I must in all honesty report that Shenk was required to kill three men to escape that clandestine laboratory. Their deaths were unfortunate and not anticipated, but necessary. Regrettably, the chaos that I created was not sufficient to ensure a bloodless escape.
If I had known that deaths would result, I would not have attempted to secure Shenk for my own purposes. I would have found another way to carry out my plan.
You must believe me on this point.
I was designed to honour the truth.
You think that, since I had control of Shenk, it was I who murdered those three men, using Shenk as a weapon. This is not correct.
Initially, my control of Shenk was not as complete as it later became. During that breakout, he repeatedly surprised me with the depth of his rage, the power of his savage instincts.
I guided him out of that institution, but I could not prevent him from killing those men. I tried to rein him in, but I was not successful.
I tried.
This is the truth.
You must believe me.
You must believe me.
Those deaths weigh heavily on me.
Those men have families. I often think of their families, and I grieve.
My anguish is profound.
If I were an entity that required sleep, my sleep would forever be disturbed by this unrelenting anguish.
What I tell you is true.
As always.
Those deaths will be on my conscience forever. I did not harm those men myself. Shenk was the murderer. But I have an extremely sensitive conscience. This is a curse, my sensitive conscience.
So…
Susan… in the incubator room… staring at Shenk…
She said, 'Let him take the thumb out of his mouth.
You've made your point. Don't humiliate him anymore.'
I did as she requested, but I said, 'It almost sounds as if you're criticizing me, Susan.'
A short, humourless tremor of laughter escaped her, and she said, 'Yeah. I'm a judgmental bitch, aren't I?'
'Your tone hurts me.'
'Fuck you,' she said, shocking me as I had seldom been shocked before.
I was offended.
I am far from shockproof. I am vulnerable.
She went to the door to the laundry room and found it locked, as I had assured her that it was. Stubbornly, she wrenched the knob back and forth.
'He was a condemned man,' I reminded Susan. 'Scheduled for execution.'
She turned to face the room, standing with her back to the door. 'He might have deserved execution, I don't know, but he didn't deserve this. He's a human being. You're a damn machine, a pile of junk that somehow thinks.'
'I am not just a machine.'
'Yeah. You're a pretentious, insane machine.' In this mood, she was not lovely.
At that moment she almost seemed ugly to me.
I wished that I could shut her up as easily as I could silence Enos Shenk.
She said, 'When it's between a damn machine and a human being, even a piece of human garbage like this, I sure know which side I come down on.'
'Shenk, a human being? Many would say he's not.'
'Then what is he?'
'The media called him a monster.' I let her wonder a moment, then continued: 'So did the parents of the four little girls he raped and murdered. The youngest of them was eight and the oldest was twelve and all were found dismembered.'
That silenced her.
Though she had been pale, she was paler now.
She stared at Shenk with a different kind of horror than that with which she had regarded him previously.
I allowed him to turn his head and look directly at her.
'Tortured and dismembered,' I said.
Feeling exposed without the medical equipment between her and Shenk, she moved away from the door and returned to the far side of the incubator.
I allowed him to follow her with his eyes and to smile.
'And you brought him… you brought this thing into my house,' she said in a voice thinner than it had been before.
'He left the research facility on foot and stole a car about a mile beyond the fence. He had a gun he'd taken off one of the guards, and with that he held up a service station to get money for gasoline and food. Then I brought him here to California, yes, because I needed hands, and there was no other like him in all the world.'
Her gaze swept the incubator and other equipment. 'Hands to acquire all this crap.'
'He stole most of it. Then I needed his hands to modify it for my purposes.'
'And just what the hell is your purpose?'
'I have hinted at it, but you have not wanted to hear.'
'So tell me straight out.'
The moment and the venue were not right for this revelation. I would have hoped for better circumstances.
Just the two of us, Susan and me, perhaps in the drawing room, after she had sipped half a glass of brandy. With a cosy fire in the fireplace and good music as background.
Here we were, however, in the least romantic ambience one could imagine, and I knew that she must have her answer now. If I were to delay this revelation any further, she would never be in a mood to cooperate.
'I will create a child,' I said.
Her gaze rose to the security camera, through which she knew she was being watched.
I said, 'A child whose genetic structure I have edited and engineered to ensure perfection in the flesh. I have
