‘Dream.’ She tossed his arm aside. ‘Do androids dream of electric sheep? Dick! Philip, K. Happy now?’
Her knowledge of his physical predicaments, the confirmation of the second pair of words from the ID phrase known only to him and Ethan, satisfied him she wasn’t a threat. ‘Sofi?’
‘Weird to meet you,’ she said, extending her hand.
He raised his right hand and found himself pulled effortlessly to his feet. ‘How much do you weigh?’
‘Nice chat up line,’ she said, pulling out a chair. ‘One hundred and thirty kilos.’
‘No offence, but I’m not in the habit of forming intimate bonds with machines,’ he said.
‘None taken,’ she replied, dragging a menu from a neighbouring table.
‘Hungry? Perhaps a glass of hydraulic fluid while you look through the menu wondering what it might be like to actually have a digestive system.’ He took off his jacket, tossed it on the seat next to him. ‘Is that what you were drinking back at the Observatory, a nice bottle of Château Petronas 2037, or was it part of Ethan’s socialisation programming?’
‘Ethan’s taught me many things about human relations. How did you know I was there?’
‘I saw the glasses in the kitchen.’ Helix raised his eyebrows. ‘Plus, the kitchen was way too tidy. Has he been teaching you to clean up after him too?’ He tapped out his order and dismissed the menu. ‘Anyway, where the hell did he get you from?’
She brushed the menu aside. ‘Terry McGill.’
‘Come again?’
She slipped off her jacket. Helix smiled to himself. Of course. Sofi was all of Ethan’s wet dreams rolled into a petite, toned, fit and very well-proportioned body. The inspiration could only have come from Ethan’s favourite character out of some dated sci-fi series they used to watch while he was recovering in hospital. He had to concede that she may have got a second glance from him too, if she were human.
‘The shrink-wrap McGill used in the park when he tried to abduct Gabrielle.’
‘What about it?’
‘Ethan borrowed it from the evidence vault once the dust had settled and Wheeler’s guilty verdict was handed down. He repaired, enhanced and remodelled it to his own specification.’
‘But it needs a remote human pilot with a synapse interface array to operate. Those things are next to bloody useless when operating autonomously.’
‘I’m operating it,’ she said. ‘Ethan created an application programming interface that connected my neural network with the synapse array. I have all of my normal functions and sub-routines augmented with more human characteristics that he installed in me or that I have studied and absorbed. My looking at the menu, as a shared social ritual, was designed to make it easier for you to bond with me.’
‘I don’t want to bond with you,’ he said, stepping over to the counter to collect his breakfast. ‘Fucking AI. It’s bad enough having to deal with them virtually, now they’re wandering around.’
‘So, what’s the plan, Nate?’
Helix stopped the bacon roll halfway to his mouth. ‘Don’t ever call me that!’ He took a bite. ‘And there is no plan. Well, not one that you’ll be a part of.’
‘Judging by how easy it was for me to put you on your back, I’m guessing you’ve lost your PCM and those antiques you call weapons.’
‘Jesus,’ he said, taking a sip of coffee. It was like talking to Ethan. ‘Tell me what happened at the Observatory.’
‘Ethan was busy working with you while you were at Blackburn’s apartment. The whole situation was completely innocuous. The gate intercom rang. He asked me to get it. It was a delivery.’ She glanced over her shoulder to check no one could overhear. ‘I opened the door and…’ She pulled her t-shirt up over her bruised and punctured breasts, revealing six bullet entry wounds. ‘The skin takes longer to repair itself than the smart-fabric.’
Helix almost choked on his second bacon roll. ‘Alright, alright, you could have just explained.’
She pulled down her shirt and tucked it into her trousers. ‘In spite of the injuries, I remained functional, until they deployed a high-powered microwave device that knocked out all of the Observatory’s electronics, a bit like the Electro Magnetic Pulse generated by—’
‘I know how they work. Did it take you out?’
‘My architecture is designed to withstand a full nuclear EMP but it required me to run diagnostics before returning to full operations.’
‘And by the time you’d rebooted, he was gone.’
‘I had no access to any feeds in or out of the Observatory, only what I was able to observe through this platform. There was no location data stream issuing from his trackers. They must have removed them before placing the charges that destroyed the building. I haven’t been able to locate him since.’
‘So, they basically walked in the front door.’ He shook his head. ‘Fuck! Ethan said he felt exposed there.’ Helix rolled his paper napkin into a ball and threw it at the autonomous attendant clearing the tables. ‘Friend of yours?’ he said, jabbing his thumb towards the device. ‘How did you find me?’
She nodded towards his jacket. ‘The comms interface is standard commercial off-the-shelf equipment. Because you left your tracking module at the Observatory we had no way of following you. Your PCM overrides the standard kit’s protocols with military grade multi-layered encryption. Whoever took you, removed it and must have either destroyed it or it was inside some kind of Faraday cage to shield it.’
‘But the standard commercial kit kicks in when the PCM is removed, right?’
‘Yes. But my hypothesis is that the same shielding was also inhibiting the commercial network transmissions from the standard kit. Until they freed you.’
‘So where’d you pick me up? We changed vehicles at least three times. Until the last change I was blindfolded. Then I was bundled into a cab.’
‘Greenford?’
It was right, but he wasn’t about to provide any validation. ‘Dunno. I was still groggy but I remember passing Wormwood Scrubs on the A40.’
‘I had tracers running across all of the comms networks waiting for a
