Alien Education Read online

  “Thank God you’re here,” Reader said, sarcasm knob at eight and rising. “Because that never would have occurred to any of us.”

  “Can Chuck come to this thing?” Tim asked quickly. “And, frankly, can we really go to this? I’m serious. If there’s an approved guest list, I don’t know what kind of entourage the President can bring.”

  “The President can bring anyone he so chooses,” Vance said. “Frankly, right now, Marcia will welcome the entire White House Complex staff. She has no idea if anyone other than Jeff and Kitty are going to show.”

  “We’ll handle it. We have a day to determine if Ansom and Talia are set to explode and if they’re broadcasting anything we don’t want broadcast.”

  “Which would be anything,” Claudia said darkly. “But I’m with Kitty—let’s get downstairs and do the Bot reviews.”

  “Vance, tell Marcia we’ll do our best to bring others along with us, and that we’ll prep them for making donations.”

  “She’ll owe you big-time, Kitty, that’s a good plan.”

  Wasn’t doing it to get Marcia Kramer on my side—it was just going to be a lot easier to roll in with what seemed like fifty people if I’d told her that I was trying to bring an army of donors along. Thankfully, the A-Cs had plenty of cash, so we could handle the donations portion of these festivities.

  “That’s me, Miz Helpful. Besides, if I can have an I Hate Charmaine Buddy at Sidwell, I’ll take them, regardless of who they are.”

  We got off the phone and chose to hyperspeed through the complex to get downstairs. As advertised, we had a pack of people on guard duty. In addition to the flyboys and the Princesses, Melanie and Emily were there, as were Abigail and Mahin.

  “No change,” Melanie said as soon as Tito was within earshot. She looked like Raquel Welch during her fur bikini days.

  Emily was studying a tablet. “Not a lot of fluctuation between them, either.” She resembled a young Sophia Loren.

  Yeah, Lorraine and Claudia came by their Dazzler gorgeousness legitimately. So had Abigail, who, like her brother, had beautiful dark skin from her mother and had the double whammy of getting the gorgeous from both her A-C father and her human mother.

  “We’re here in case things change and/or fluctuate,” Abigail said with a grin, indicating herself and Mahin. Abigail and Jerry had come out about their being an item near the end of Operation Immigration—facing the end of the world did tend to focus people on admitting attraction and sharing that with friends and family. So I was pretty sure that she was happy to be helping Jerry and the rest of the flyboys “guard.”

  “And we are here because the Great Tito requested it,” Rahmi added. She might be married to Tito, but that hadn’t stopped her hero worship of him. Whatever made a relationship work well was A-okay with me, of course.

  Rhee nodded. “But so far, nothing has happened.” She sounded disappointed. Not a surprise—the princesses were from Beta Twelve, where butt-kicking was a way of life.

  By contrast to all the Dazzlers On Duty, Rahmi, Rhee, and Mahin merely looked normally attractive. Mahin was also a hybrid, being one of Ronald Yates’ many illegitimate offspring. Her mother was Iranian, and since human genetics ruled for external on hybrids, Mahin naturally looked Middle Eastern. She wasn’t ugly by any definition, but in a room full of Dazzlers, Mahin and I were not going to win any beauty contests.

  Like Abigail, who was a textbook female hybrid in that she was talented above the norm, Mahin’s power was earth-bending. If it had dirt in it or on it, she could move it. Unlike Abigail and, so far as we’d found, all the other female hybrids, though, Mahin’s internal parts were far more human than A-C. She could handle hyperspeed without Tito’s special Dramamine, but she couldn’t run at hyperspeed herself. She had only one heart, and she wasn’t super strong.

  By comparison, I had more A-C skills than she did, but she made up for it by being dedicated to learning all the many ways to kick butt. She and Abigail had also learned to work their powers in tandem, which was helpful in many ways.

  Had a thought. “Mahin, do you have any special baked goods recipes from your homeland that you’ve been craving?”

  She stared at me for a moment. “Ah, no? I mean, I’m sure I could make something if it was necessary.”

  “Kitty just wants company tomorrow,” Jeff said reassuringly. “She’ll explain later.”

  Mahin nodded. “If you need me, my schedule will be clear. But, don’t we need to deal with what’s down here?”

  “Oh, we do. I just hate letting good ideas slip away.” Resolved to take Mahin with me to the bake sale—had a feeling I was going to need all the moral support I could get.

  The flyboys were each stationed in front of five containers I recognized—the A-C’s portable containment units. They were 10x10x10, with thick steel walls, a heavy-duty door that locked securely from the outside, and windows made of thick shatterproof glass or similar. They were also set up so that those on the outside could hear those on the inside.

  The only containment units I’d seen had been set up as medical bays. These weren’t. Each of them looked like what was in an empathic isolation chamber.

  “Why are they in Sarcophagi From Hell?”

  “They’re not that bad,” Jeff said comfortingly.

  That he was comforting me was probably an irony I should have felt guilty about. After all, I didn’t need to ever use an isolation chamber. But Jeff did. All the time. Because when his empathic synapses shut down, he needed an isolation room and regenerative fluids or he’d die. We wouldn’t have made it past the first two days of knowing each other without the isolation chambers. But that didn’t make them any less creepy to me.

  These days, we had a lovely isolation room in our Presidential Suite, because the Elves had moved the one that had been in our suite at the Embassy into the White House. They were helpy helpers that way. Meaning it was more like an austere hotel or cozy hospital setup. Meaning I’d avoided looking at a real isolation chamber for quite some time. So this was a harsh reminder.

  It was slightly less creepy to see three people I didn’t care for hooked up to the wires and needles and such, all on the rotating metal bed that could go every which way but was usually at a gentle angle so heads were higher than feet, but the person wasn’t fully horizontal. But only slightly less.

  Seeing what looked exactly like Christopher in the fourth chamber was just a negative reminder of Operation Confusion, when we’d had to put him into isolation due to his Surcenthumain addiction. Not comforting to remind myself that this was merely his robotic double, since Christopher-Bot the Second’s existence was discomforting no matter what.

  Of course, the fifth room didn’t have an occupant so much as a collection of remaining Christopher-Bot the First parts. I was underwhelmed to discover that it was no less creepy than seeing full bodies.

  All four of the other rooms’ “living” occupants seemed relaxed, however. “Tito, are they conscious?” Had to ask, because I truly couldn’t tell if they were breathing, let alone awake.

  “No. We put them into a form of suspended animation. In part to ensure that if they exploded because of it, they’d be contained.”

  “Good thinking,” Serene said. She looked around at the ceiling and walls. “This area is pretty sturdy.”

  “I know where you’re going with this,” Reader said. “I’m not sure that it’s a great idea for you to do your examinations here as opposed to Dulce.”

  Serene shrugged. “Here or there, the risks are the same.”

  “To the White House Complex they’re not,” Reader pointed out.

  “The rooms are too heavy to move easily through a gate,” she counter-pointed out. Rightly. While we had big stationary gates at the Crash Site Dome, where the main gate equipment was housed, and we could also create big floater gates, the things we took through those were mobile—peop
le or vehicles. There was a reason the A-Cs built the containment chambers in pieces, and it was because each piece was hella heavy, even for beings with super strength. Sure, we could have a bunch of A-Cs shove a containment chamber through a gate, but it seemed like a lot of needless effort.

  “I’m with Serene. If she can bring what she needs here, it’ll be faster and easier for her to do the examinations.”

  “I could try to help,” Mahin said uncertainly.

  “Absolutely not,” Reader said calmly. “And I don’t want Abigail offering, either. That’s a waste of your talents and energy for something that’s not necessary. I’m sure we’ll need you, and sooner than any of us would like, but not for this.”

  “I agree.” Jeff sighed. “And our legacy can’t be turning the White House to rubble because it was convenient.”

  “Our legacy happens to be having kept most of this town standing more than once.” Just felt that I needed to point that out, particularly since Abigail and Naomi had been the main reasons all of D.C.’s historic buildings and museums were anything other than smoking piles of rubble.

  Chuckie sighed. “Kitty’s right. Jeff’s right. James is right. Serene’s right. Tito, what, in your medical opinion, as the person who’s examined these four the closest, do you recommend?”

  “Like I said, I couldn’t find anything that looked like a self-destruct or any other kind of bomb. And I examined the entire bodies of all four of them, and all the exploded parts. I’ve made sure that I and my staff know what to look for, just in case.”

  “Literally there’s nothing dangerous going on with any of these,” Emily said. “Their readings indicate that nothing has changed since Doctor Hernandez put them under.”

  “We found nothing that looked like any sort of bomb,” Melanie added. “And we do know what to look for. Serene’s our expert, but Emily and I aren’t chopped liver when it comes to this sort of work.”

  “The choice is yours, Jeff,” Reader said. “You know my thoughts.”

  Before Jeff could reply, Jerry, who was looking into the room with the Christopher-Bot the First’s remains, shouted. “You all need to see this!”

  CHAPTER 31

  NO ONE HESITATED—we all trotted over to Jerry’s unit and looked inside. To see the various Bot parts disintegrating.

  “What the literal hell?” Tito asked everyone and no one. “Is there a contaminate in the room?”

  “No,” Emily replied tensely. “Readings indicate that nothing’s changed from when we left it.”

  Didn’t stop to admire the view. Headed over to the unit that Hughes was covering, the one with the Christopher-Bot the Second. He was still intact. “Can we wake him up?”

  Emily was next to me in an instant. “I think so. Doctor?”

  “Go for it,” Tito said tensely. “I have no idea if we care if he melts or not.”

  “I don’t need to see a Wizard of Oz reenactment, so I’m hoping not. Oh, crap.” Ran over to the Kristie-Bot’s unit. She was still intact, too. Did a fast check on Somerall and Lee, then went back to the Christopher-Bot the Second. He was blinking and seemed to be breathing. “Um, is he breathing?”

  “He imitates breathing,” Melanie said. “So does the Kitty-Bot. In order to fool people, the robots need to appear to be human.”

  “He’s not taking in air so much as appearing to take in air,” Tito added. “Same with blinking. Neither this one nor the Kitty-Bot need to blink to keep their eyes moist but they do it. To not blink would alert everyone quickly that something’s wrong with them.”

  “Versus the others who are blinking and breathing because they have to?” Chuckie asked, as he eyed Joe and Randy.

  Joe nodded. “If I don’t breathe I die, Chuck.”

  “And I can’t not blink without my eyes watering,” Randy added.

  “It’s the same with the other three,” Tito confirmed.

  “So, the Kristie-Bot could still be killed, right? If she breathes, she could breathe in a toxin.”

  Everyone looked at me. “That was out of the blue,” Jeff said.

  “Not really. Stephanie’s selling this procedure as the longevity solution, but if you can still die from breathing in a toxin, or just too much pollution, then it doesn’t work totally as advertised.”

  “Are you hoping to use that as a way to convince people not to have the procedure done?” Chuckie asked. “Or are you hoping to kill off the Kristie-Bot?”

  “Not sure if that would dissuade anyone who wanted to stay young and beautiful forever, but we need to know how to fight these things. I’m not suggesting slaughter, but I think that it might be time to think like our enemies do.”

  “Offensively as opposed to defensively?” Gower asked. I nodded. He shook his head. “I’m not sure that we want to be anything like them, Kitty.”

  “The best defense is a good offense,” Rhee said. Everyone looked at her. She shrugged. “I enjoy watching American football.”

  “My sister is correct, though,” Rahmi added. “As is Kitty. Preparedness is key when dealing with your enemies.”

  “I don’t believe Missus Martini wants us going forth to randomly murder these people, if we can call them that,” White said. “However, I agree with her and the princesses—we need to think like our enemies, if we can, so we can be prepared to counter them. We may actually have a way to be prepared if we can identify all the weaknesses in the Kristie-Bot.”

  “Thank you for the support, girls, and what Richard said. And clearly that won’t work on the Bots, so we need a lot of ideas.”

  “I don’t want to die,” the Christopher-Bot the Second said.

  I’d forgotten that those inside the containment units could hear those outside of them. “Um, sorry, but you murdered your brother, or duplicate, or whatever you call each other. And now his parts have dissolved.”

  “Into a puddle of goo,” Jerry shared, sounding grossed out. He was still at his post, just as the rest of the flyboys were, though everyone else was with me. “The puddle isn’t moving, so there’s that.”

  “Good, I don’t want to star in a remake of The Blob any time soon. So, Christopher-Bot the Second, what have you got for us about your brother’s melting situation?”

  “We’re made of a polymer that will dissolve if we’re destroyed,” he replied calmly, without complaining about his new moniker. There might be hope for him yet. “This is to ensure that no one can duplicate us.” He sounded like he was in a big fishbowl, but that was the result of the way the containment units worked.

  “That sounds like an A-C fail-safe to me.”

  White nodded. “I agree, Missus Martini. Meaning that Trevor had something to do with the creation of these Bots.”

  The Christopher-Bot the Second cocked his head, hard to do while strapped to a metal table, but he managed it. “I don’t know that name.”

  “Doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved,” Reader said. “However, I still want to know why you blew up your counterpart, when he was warning us of the exact same things that you are.”

  The Christopher-Bot the Second seemed to actually consider this question. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Perhaps we were programmed to distrust ourselves?”

  “But you said you overcame your programming and are now self-aware,” Jeff said, rather gently. “I don’t think it can be both.”

  “Why can’t it?” the Christopher-Bot the Second asked. “Humans have programming that they do and don’t overcome.”

  “Wow, philosophy from a Bot. But he’s actually right. There’s plenty that humans, and A-Cs for that matter, and probably every other life-form out there, do automatically. There are things we actively work to overcome, but there are some things that are so ingrained we might not even realize that we were programmed to think or do them.”

  “I’m more interested in the idea that you’re made out of somethin
g that melts if it’s separated long enough,” Tito said. “That seems dangerous for you. We had you dormant for a while—would you melt if we’d turned you ‘off’ or similar?”

  “I don’t know,” the Christopher-Bot the Second said calmly. “I just know that if we’re blown up we won’t be able to be put back together again. We’re not Humpty Dumpty.”

  Jerked. “What? Why did you use that example, Humpty Dumpty?”

  “It’s a common one that humans understand.”

  “Why do you care about that?” Claudia asked.

  “Because it’s not something a robot would normally be programmed with,” Chuckie replied for me. “Nursery rhymes and how they’d relate to other situations aren’t necessarily information you’d put into a robot.”

  “But you would into an android. At least, Antony Marling would have and very likely did. So, what does that mean? Is he a product of a Marling and Tinkerer matchup?”

  “Does it matter?” Tim asked. “I mean that seriously. I feel like our big issue right now is what we do with Ansom Somerall and Talia Lee. As in, do we take them with us to that party tomorrow or do we not? And what do we do with them regardless of the party? They said they weren’t aware that their brains had been tampered with, right? So, how did someone get them?”

  “Oh. Wow. Um, I think that there’s a really good chance that they were ‘gotten’ by all those people we were talking about earlier. As in, we have those traitorous A-Cs and all those humans who used to work for the former Diplomatic Corp all bustling about at Gaultier Enterprises and YatesCorp. What if they’re who helped get these two onto the New Robotics Lifestyle?”

  Everyone was quiet for a few long moments. “That seems sensible,” the Christopher-Bot the Second said finally. “If I follow you.”

  “Nice to know the robots are programmed to speak Kitty,” Reader said with a quick grin. “But, I think that idea makes a lot of sense.”