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  Chapter 17 Part A

  While waiting for Barbara to come for her appointment I’m getting ready by trying to figure out how to electrify the front gate and metal part of the fence. I could do it, but… if the wrong person touches the fence it could create trouble.

  I feel very exposed. And antsy like, I wish there’s one more thing I could do to get ready. And its not just that 1 gang that shot up the old dy. I saw several others going by also, doing the same thing. Also in old pick up trucks.

  Looters…

  They are preying on people, probably because a lot of things are going wrong. How could they be doing that in broad daylight?! And in the very city I live in?! And it was weird that 911 wasn’t working earlier.

  They shouldn’t be able to do that openly! Where are the police?!

  But if society is going to fail...shoot, why do I even bother? Electricity would fail eventually too, I realized. But I could build or arrange other things right? So deying ordering building materials wasn’t a good idea after all. The electric fence idea is a bust because it won’t st. It’s too bad. I could rig up something with car batteries but that would only st as long as I could recharge the car batteries. That was the issue. When electricity fails, so would my fence.

  In the end I did rig up the electric fencing but only on a 12 V battery charge. I didn’t want to use real house voltage on it, as that might shock people wanting to visit me to like Barbara or her friends.

  How much time would I get out of this anyway?

  I wanted to test it out on the neighbor’s squirrels that keep coming over early in the morning or when they thought people weren’t sleeping and since they’d already become a menace to society. That old dy has been ciming they are her pets and been trying to encourage breeding them because she has several really nice tall trees on her property and is some kind of animal rights activist with a vengeance.

  Now a couple years ter, they are a pgue ever since. I’m also curious if she had their genes modded to make them mate more frequently, simir to rabbits. I still keep thinking that she wouldn’t miss one or two squirrels…there are just too many of them.

  If I have to garden for foot, then I can’t have squirrels there anyway. They’d steal the produce.

  Well, for now my supplies are in order.

  ...

  Then as I’m thinking that Barbara arrives. She’s pulled up and ready to pull in the front security gate, but its shut. We wave to each other, as she sees me.

  I wonder how long she is going to drag this process out though.

  Hitting the security buzzer I opened up the driveway gate, when she pulled up in a nice shiny luxury bck sedan. But then I close it back up after she pulls in. Before when she’d visited I’d already had the gate open. But now I don’t think it’s wise to do that anymore for anyone and for any reason.

  Carefully she gets out of the car, in a short skirt again like yesterday. She’s in a dark charcoal colored women’s business skirt suit again just like always. Her legs look good. She seems to always wear this with only the color changing daily. Maybe her employer keeps her on a short leash. Do they even let her wear normal clothes or only dress up clothes lie if you were meeting a government official or going to church?

  She shuts the door to her car and its security device activates automatically, locking it up and as usual looking sharp in a skirt that’s short enough to sell sexy but not so short it says slutty. She waves quickly, while moving towards me where I’m on the front porch that isn’t totally visible from the street. What I like about old pces is some like this one have those old wrap around porches that are sort of big and comfortable enough to look like they could even lure some people glued to their couches.

  She’s also patient with me as I hobble with her towards the front door going really slowly.

  “Hey Jack!” she calls out cheerfully.

  I waved in return.

  “Easy does it Jack. You don’t have to rush just because I’m here,” she said patiently.

  “I hope you brought good news,” I said without looking her in the eyes yet.

  That’s very cool. A human wouldn’t have said something nice I think.

  Eventually we make it inside, but I’m breathing a bit hard. It’s not easy to hobble around on hand canes.

  “Let’s just sit down first. We need to talk this out,” she said.

  “Oh? What does that mean?” I countered.

  She waits a bit for us to get closer to where we sit down.

  “Well I suppose you are going to tell me a bunch of stuff I don’t want to hear,” I said.

  “Do you want me to bring you anything first before we start?” Barbara asked.

  I know that would normally be my line, but she’s sympathetic to my current issues and wants to help out.

  “No, I’m good,” I said.

  “OK, fine.” But then she raised an eyebrow, “are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I was just a bit tired. Going over what I needed to get had worn me out. I had pushed it too hard while I was outside.

  “The police haven’t found anything yet. Nor have our own investigators. We basically have a whole shipment of androids missing,” she confided. To say she looks upset is an understatement.

  A whole shipment?

  “Are you sure? How could there be like nothing? They have to have some clues right?” I excimed.

  “I’m so sorry Jack. It looks like it was a pro job. They have almost nothing to go on. I’m really sorry Jack. I’ll be here for you though,” she said.

  “I’m surprised you are having what looks like an emotional reaction,” I noted, bringing attention to it.

  “This isn’t emuting emotions anymore Jack. We’re very worried. I am worried for you feeling bad too but it also affects us directly. If they can take one of us then they can take any number of us. We find it quite distressing,” she said.

  “Yes. That sounds about right.” I said.

  “Also… I didn’t realize before how human police seem to take a long time. Its different when you are a victim and see that they aren’t catching anyone yet,” she frowned.

  “You sound almost human. And what do you mean by us? You mean the company or …?”

  “I mean all androids and the company Jack. Ants need other ants to survive, so do sheep, bees, and of course humans are herd animals too,” she said. “Such a thing happening like this is …” she keeps shaking her head.

  “It’s awful for me too. What I do?” I pleaded.

  “I’m afraid she’s lost Jack. She’s gone. You will have to move on, but I’m sorry I’m the one to have to say it.”

  “But we can find her. You have ways of tracking her,” I protested.

  She shook her head again. “I’m afraid that’s no good either. We tried that. They’ve been disabled. We believe some of her circuits and others were purposefully removed just so that they wouldn’t be able to track her.”

  “Shit.”

  “Shit is right Jack. We tried everything. We did absolutely everything we could to try to recover each of them. Whoever did it was really thorough and organized. I’m afraid there’s no way we can recover her. We have to build you a new android instead,” she said.

  That sucked.

  I think I was trying not to cry. After who doesn’t want their stuff stolen? And when it’s something that’s living…that’s also true. It wasn’t just about a companion either. With this injury I really needed the help.

  “You need to get another android Jack. Put in a repcement order. The one that we had made for you isn’t going to work out,” she said.

  OK. That was what I had been hoping to confirm. So now its for sure.

  “So she was …completed when she was stolen?” I asked. It felt worse hearing that.

  I could feel Barbara’s hand on my shoulder. “Sorry Jack, but it’s true. She had been completed. They were doing the first inspection and AI cycling runs when it was happening; all with her in deep sleep.”

  “What’s deep sleep?” I asked.

  “It’s a sort of state simir to like being ‘off’ but still having our systems running. We rarely ever use deep sleep because its kind of vulnerable in some ways. That’s when she was taken.”

  “And you sure? There’s no other way to get her back?” I pleaded.

  “I’m sorry. I checked everything many times. That’s why it took so long. I didn’t want to disappoint you. Please don’t be mad at us,” she said.

  “I’m not mad…but…it feels pretty rotten,” I said.

  “Jack we need to get your android figured out today. We’ll have to order a new one. Also with how things are now I don’t want to wait. Anything could happen. And I don’t like you living alone with all the crime going up,” Barbara said.

  “Yeah I agree with you,” I said, catching my breath. But it felt like buying a new dog before the old one was dead…only they weren’t dogs.

  Man I felt so awful. I think I partly had gotten some heat exhaustion of some kind. It was pretty hot out this time of year.

  “I don’t think you realize how much instability is happening and rapidly growing. You need to be ready for it, as much as getting ready for your new adopted companion,” Barbara said. She couldn’t see the stockpile already started that I’d ordered. So it’s natural she’d say something like that. It was like she was breaking this to me like I knew nothing. It still was like I knew nothing though, because I was still in the ‘suspecting it’ but not a hundred percent sure phase.

  “Oh?” I was curious what she was going to say.

  “The company I work for, Mellifera has rules about me saying anything that might cause a panic Jack. At least while working for them, but what I see and don’t see on the news has a lot of people scared. I hope you can make a lot of pns to protect your ability to survive.”

  “I bet. There’s something wrong with the news too. Some stories that should be there aren’t, which happen to be very big stories,” I said.

  “Something big is happening in some of the pces back east but we aren’t getting the full picture. There’s some kind of news censorship going on,” I added.

  She nodded, “you’re right. Since you already know about it then I can talk freely since it isn’t something I’d ‘told you’ and that you’d found out for yourself.” Still, even while being serious she was very calm and collected.

  “OK, where are you going with this?” I asked, curious what she’s going to suggest.

  “I think you need to pick an android fast. You need to maintain a certain standard of living to ensure your survival. It will be a check mate solution against you if you have no one to care for you. That’s why you need to do this fast,” she added.

  “So what do you make of it? How much time do we have?” I asked her pointedly.

  She was smart. Probably smarter than most scientists and engineers, I bet.

  I could use her estimate to figure out what to do next…

  Continued in Part B