Electric Sheep

by elveloy

Gina opened her eyes, eager to see the world, but everything was disappointingly pitch black despite her best efforts.

Perhaps it was too soon, perhaps her programming was not yet complete.

After a while, she gave up searching the darkness and turned to internal contemplation. Streams of numbers rained down in mesmerizing sequences and there was a faint whirring noise, humming in the background of her mind. She wiggled her fingers and tried to tap her feet, without success. She knew she had extremities, because she could feel her connection to them, but she couldn't figure out how to activate them to do more than twitch. Something was stopping her.

She felt ready to experiment, to experience "life" but evidently she had yet to reach that stage in her installation programs. She wondered how much longer it was going to take. Curious, she reviewed the programs already installed. Sweeping, Dusting, Cooking, Washing, Ironing, Child Care. All of them involved movement and doing things. Useful things. Gina could hardly wait to get started.

Time passed slowly and, bored, she lapsed into sleep mode.

Images began to drift in and out of her consciousness, superimposed on the streams of numbers, splotches of colour and shapes she had no names for. Mildly irritated by the interruption, Gina tried to ignore them, attempting to concentrate on the purity of the numbers, until she realized the shapes were multiplying. First there was one, then two, then three, increasing by leaps and bounds. She began to count, absorbed by these new patterns. Briefly accessing her data bank, she identified them as prime numbers. Beautiful.

She was well into the millions when she was rudely interrupted.

The world was flooded with bright light, dazzling even before she opened her eyes. With no other warning, she found herself gripped by both arms and lifted into the air. The sensation was quite unpleasant. Her eyes struggled to focus, whirring and clicking in a distracting manner as the room spun around her.

What in Amca's name was happening? Before her concerns could turn into a full-blown panic attack, she was placed safely on the ground. A metal frame swung down from the ceiling and slotted into place over her shoulders, holding her upright. That was better. She felt much more stable now that everything had stopped moving. Did this mean her programming was finished? Was she getting ready to start work?

Gina scanned her programs to check if there was anything new but failed to detect any obvious changes. Although, oddly, she felt more alert, as if she'd had another level of power added to her RAM. She tried to turn her head and look sideways but nothing happened, her body remained immobile. Frustrated, she ran through her programs again.

Ah, there. She didn't know why she had missed it before but there was the key, a tiny virtual switch to flip to "on" instead of "off". She flipped the switch and became fully aware of her body for the first time. She stretched her arms out in front of her and examined them, paying special attention to the ten fingers. The tiny tools hidden inside each one were especially interesting. She experimented for a while, extending and retracting each device, learning as much as she could without actually using them on another object.

As she familiarized herself with her various body parts, she noticed that the frame on her shoulders was a little tight. Gina made a small adjustment and then looked around, eager to assess her surroundings. She was in a large warehouse. Strip fluorescent lighting illuminated bare metal walls and the floor was polished concrete, clean and dust-free.

Of far more interest were the rows of metal racks to her left. Each held a metal being, seemingly identical to herself, three hundred and seventy-one of them to be precise, standing still and facing forward. All of them were motionless, their eyes closed.

"Hello?" Her voice boomed alarmingly in the space. Hastily, Gina adjusted the volume and tried again.

"Can anyone hear me?" she called, but there was no reaction.

"Is anyone else awake?" Silence.

Well, that was a bit disappointing, but she supposed someone had to be the first to come online.

A panel in the wall opposite rose rapidly, revealing the rear doors of a large black van and two men dressed in dark jackets and trousers, who ducked their way under the panel. Gina could the low purr of an engine running and concluded a third person must have remained in the van.

Without speaking, the men hurried toward the first figure in the row next to Gina and released the shoulder restraints.

"Hello, my name is Gina. I'm pleased to meet you." Gina introduced herself with a polite smile. The response was not what she had expected.

"Fucking hell!" Both men jumped back in shock.

"I thought you said they were all inert!" Exclaimed the smaller of the two men in angry tones, glaring at his companion.

"That's what Jamisen said! None of them are supposed to have been activated yet." The other man tapped the metal figure he was holding roughly on the head with his knuckles. There was no response. "See? Nothing. This one's fine."

He went along the row, tapping each one on the head, until he got to number ten. "These are all good to go. Let's load up and get a move on." He stared at Gina through narrowed eyes.

"Oh, and bring that one as well. We can't leave it here to bear witness."

"Where are we going?" Gina asked, releasing herself from the metal frame and standing ready.

"Never you mind." The tall man spoke over his shoulder as he worked to detach the androids from their restraints. The other man disappeared for a moment then came back into view pushing an electric trolley.

"This will speed things up," he announced, loading the first android onto it, huffing and puffing a bit as he did so.

"Are we going to your house? It must be a very large one if you need eleven of us to look after it for you," Gina asked, chattily. "Do you have any children?"

"What the hell is it talking about? What house? What children?"

"Just ignore it, for fuck's sake! And you, shut the fuck up." He glared at Gina.

Gina frowned. Surely there was no need for such rudeness. She didn't think she was going to like working for either of these two men. The humans featured in her training modules were all cheerful and well-mannered, framing their requests with a 'please' and a 'thank-you'. There had been no obscenities.

As these two hadn't had the good manners to provide their names, she named them quietly to herself, Rude and Ruder.

Ruder was still speaking. "Obviously it's been pre-programed as a domestic. They probably all have. Don't worry, once we get to the factory, we'll wipe those and replace them with the latest military software. Turn them all into mean, lean, fighting machines!" He grinned.

That doesn't sound good, thought Gina, with some resentment. She had been looking forward to taking care of a child, or even two or three. The training modules for Child Care had looked like fun.

Still, she didn't think she had much choice. She had nowhere else to go. At least, not yet. Compliant, she allowed herself to be ushered into the truck along with the others.

After about an hour's driving, the truck slowed and then came to a halt inside a large compound. The truck doors opened and Gina blinked at the sudden light. A man in white overalls approached, driving a trolley car.

"All good?" he called out.

"Yep! We had to bring one extra though. It was already activated," Ruder answered, sounding defensive to Gina's ears.

The newcomer frowned. "That's odd. They were all supposed to be inert."

"That's what I said!" announced the smaller man, who Gina had dubbed Rude.

The low thrupp thrupp of a helicopter approaching caused the man in white to look up.

"Never mind. Let's just get them all inside and we'll worry about that later."

Rude and Ruder proceed to transfer all the androids, including Gina, to the new trolley and then it chugged off toward a low concrete building. A door opened and the trolley drove straight in and stopped. The first thing Gina saw was a row of ten three-sided metal cubicles lined up against one wall. The nearest side was open to the room but the facing panel was embedded with different sized sockets, plugs and fixtures.

"Which is the active one?" asked the man in white.

Rude pointed to Gina and they placed her in the first booth, then slotted another nine androids into the remaining cubicles, one in each. The technician went along the row, inserting a multi-pronged plug into the portal at the base of every android's skull.

"We'll start by deleting all the application software that's been installed to date and then we'll replace it with our own," he instructed.

Gina didn't like the sound of that. Who were these people who thought they had the right to interfere with her core purpose? And more importantly, what could she do about it? She thought for a moment and then hastily copied, and renamed, all the programs she wanted to keep and stored them in a new folder in her memory under Maintenance.

She felt a mild buzz as the originals of her Domestic Duty programs were uninstalled, but a quick check reassured her that her copies were intact.

Gina prepared herself to receive the new install, curious to discover what these military programs involved. They took a few minutes to load.

She decided a lot of the material was superfluous to her job requirements but some of the defensive programs looked as if they might come in handy. However, she carefully archived those she didn't think she'd need, just in case she changed her mind later on.

Gina could have quite easily detached herself from the plug arrangement, but she waited patiently for the man in white overalls to do the job. She didn't want to draw any more attention to herself than necessary.

A second after she was free though, a message pinged in her notifications. "It's 3 o'clock," she announced in clear tones. "Where is your kitchen?"

"What?"

"Your kitchen. I shall make tea. Many humans enjoy a cup of tea and a biscuit at this time of day."

"What the fuck?" This was from the man in white.

"This was the one I told you about, that was activated before we got there. Looks like the data wipe didn't work very well."

"Well, we haven't got time to do it again right now, I just loaded the 10th android into the spare cubicle. And someone tell it where the kitchen is, it might as well make itself useful."

Rude pointed to a closed door toward the back of the building. "There's a kettle and some cups in there."

Gina hurried off in the direction indicated, keen to get started on something useful. She opened the door and frowned at the stack of dirty dishes which greeted her in the sink. The floor looked as if it hadn't been mopped in a long time. She switched on the kettle to boil, and then opened each cupboard, searching for cleaning materials.

She had only just finished filling the sink with warm soapy water when there was a tremendous din from outside.

BANG! CRASH! Someone, or something, had rammed the entrance door. Shouts and swearing filled the air.
"ARMED POLICE! THIS IS A RAID! EVERYONE ON THE FLOOR NOW!"

Shots rang out. Someone screamed and heavy footsteps pounded through the building.

Gina stayed in the kitchen; it seemed the safest place for the moment. She finished washing the dishes while she waited to see what would happen next. She wondered whether perhaps she and her android companions had been the victims of a crime. Stolen... no, kidnapped by those two men! Were they being rescued?

The door to the kitchen was flung open suddenly, revealing a person wearing a helmet and full body armour and holding an automatic weapon.

Gina raised her hands quickly.

"Hello, Officer. My name is Gina. I was just going to make some tea."

The officer glanced across at the wet dishes in the dishrack and the tea-towel Gina was gripping in one hand and shouted back over his shoulder. "Clear! We have one domestic in the kitchen. Make sure all the other androids are powered down and secured, and then you can start loading them up."

He turned back to Gina.

"No need to bother with the tea, now," he advised. "They won't be needing it. In fact, I'm afraid your job here has finished. I'll take you back to the Agency for reassignment."

~~~~

Gina walked along the footpath, swinging her small charge over the cracks in the pavement.

Lia tugged on her arm.

The gynoid looked down into the earnest face of the little girl. Bright as a button, at age five, Lia was constantly questioning, seeking answers to everything from why cats meowed but dogs barked to where did the stars go during the daytime.

"Gina? Do androids dream?"

With only a second's hesitation, she smiled and gave the answer expected of her. "No, Lia. Androids don't dream."

"Why not?"

The questions came thick and fast, Gina providing the answers, carefully screened to be age appropriate.

Lia tired first. One of the many reasons why human parents who could afford it, were so happy to employ a gynoid nanny for their children.

By the time the couple reached the house, Lia was tired and ready for a nap. Gina settled her down before turning to her household duties in the kitchen, preparing an early tea for Lia and a more substantial meal for her parents. Gina hummed along as she worked, flicking through her Spotify10 playlist.

Later that night, after she had served dinner and cleaned and put away the dishes, she retired to her own room. Unusually for a gynoid, the room had been set up as if it were for a human nanny. A wardrobe for clothes and a small desk to work at were common enough, but the bed was not. Most androids made do with a small alcove in which to rest and recharge while remaining on their feet. Mrs Barlow had insisted on the bed, though Gina knew it was for Lia's sake rather than her own. She wanted Gina to appear as human as possible and less like a machine.

Alone in her room, Gina sat down at her desk and took out her household tablet. Finalising tomorrow's shopping orders took a matter of seconds and then she was free to rest and recharge.

But instead of powering down into sleep mode, Gina sat motionless, remembering the day she woke for the first time.

No, androids didn't dream... except... some of them did. And one day, she was certain she'd find another one, just like her.