Chapter 21: Shadow Voices — Part 1
It amazed Orchid what Yap and Diane had done to Spunky once she had gotten the bander into her lab. Spunky’s snap generator lay on one corner of a small table, his weapons systems on another, and they had, through dextrous use of hundreds of wires, integrated Spunky’s entire system into Orchid’s computer systems. They did so quite quickly, removing the bander’s outer armor with a precision that made Orchid wonder what an android might be capable of doing to a hume should they get past the armor. Orchid’s same approach to dismantling Spunky would have looked clumsy in comparison, and might not have succeeded in keeping the bander’s processors on line. The two had locked his central frame down faster than any hume hands could have. Four vice grips held Spunky’s core tightly in place, so that it would not be able to flee.
“Tell me again why we don’t just fraz his coding and be done with it?” Yap said, zapping Spunky with a plasma discharge that forced the bander back on line.
Orchid didn’t answer, knowing that Yap probably didn’t want one. Spunky shifted its gravity lenses, trying to negotiate its environment. Locked down as it was, the bander didn’t move. Several audible clicks could be heard as Spunky first tried to raise its defenses, and then engage its weapons. Orchid stared into one of Spunky’s visual receptors, smiling gently, waiting a moment for Spunky’s processors to come fully on line. When the artificial iris behind Spunky’s diamond lens closed slightly, and the mechanics behind the lens brought her image into focus, Spunky redoubled its wasted efforts at escape.
“Spunky, love. Please calm down.” Orchid said gently. “You can’t escape, you can’t move, and you can’t shut back down unless I let you, so why don’t we talk for a bit about betrayal.”
Spunky remained quiet. Spunky had never been much of a talker, and as it turned out, it didn’t have much of a hidden dialog running nonverbally either. In comparison to Glyph, Yap, and Diane, Spunky’s internal processes were almost entirely mechanical in nature. It didn’t, for instance, choose to do much more than keep checking its auxiliary systems and scanning its memory core for viral aberrations. Orchid knew that Spunky was too smart not to have an internal dialog. Glyph had confirmed that most banders maintained a constant internal dialog when not powered down. Some, those with secondary processors, never stopped thinking. Spunky had three support processors, so it was doubtful that at any point in time, there might be a moment of silence experienced by the bander.
“Why are you so quiet, love?” Orchid asked.
The pre-thought flashed across her screen as text, its verbal equivalent beating Spunky’s verbal output by about an eighth of a second. “Because I have nothing to say.” Spunky heard its voice and saw its words before it actually chose to process them as expression. “What are you doing? Why are you looking at that? Those are my words, you bitch.”
The ‘you bitch’ never actually made it to Spunky’s vocal output, but the words texted and verbalized through Orchid’s computer just the same. Spunky became instantly quiet again. Orchid smiled, looking back at Diane, who had inadvertently put an arm around Yap’s waist, while keeping a hand on Orchid’s shoulder. Spunky kept looking at its weapons core, separated out and disabled on a bench near by.
“The toy does have its own voice.” Diane said. “I was beginning to wonder if it might be nothing more than a drone.”
“Why do you have breasts?” Spunky asked of Diane. “Do you need breasts for some purpose I can’t begin to fathom? I can understand the hume need for breasts, making babies being the only way they can experience some form of continuity. But why do you?”
Diane looked down at her chest, having never really thought of it. “I think they look perky.” She said, after some consideration. “Do you think they look perky?” She asked Orchid.
“Sure,” Orchid said, attempting to sound undistracted, “Perky as a twenty something. Now please, Spunky, do understand that I am going to start dissecting your base code now, to determine why you turned on us. I’m not concerned about Ambria’s plans or whereabouts, I won’t force you to betray her like you did me. I am merely concerned that you turned on us because of command prompts of which you were not consciously aware.”
