The Mechanic [BL]

[105]

Chapter 105 – Twin Cities (3)

At nine o'clock at night, when the whole of Lost Paradise was under martial law, the streets were empty except for the droids patrolling them.

The visual information collected by each droid was transmitted to both Adam and Pan at all times. Even where there were no droids, there were visible and inconspicuous surveillance cameras slowly rotating, taking in every corner of Lost Paradise.

An extension droid stopped outside the silent Dionysus club, the huge clock tower was frozen into an impermeable silhouette in the darkness of the night. Its cylindrical head lifted slightly, looking towards the still, morning clock.

"Are you thinking of him?"

Pan's 'voice', or rather a message, appeared in Adam's head.

Adam was still sitting in his chair in the basement level of the Lab, his eyes vacant and distracted. He responded in his head, "Yes. You?"

"I don't have a human body. Though I wish my administrator was here, it's probably not quite the same as your 'longing'."

"Maybe it's not that different." Adam added some code to the AI language he sent over, to describe the feeling of 'longing' he was experiencing as a human and then continued with two lines of AI language conveying all the following information: I remember when my first administrator, my creator, completed me. He told me that I would serve humans for the rest of my life, but that no human was my master. He would often visit me, until one day he came in his wheelchair to see the changes in my parameters and never appeared again.

On that last occasion, he didn't say goodbye to me and our conversation wasn't much different from every other one before. He would ask me what data I had collected, what new things I had learned, what new insights I had gained about human beings. Our conversation lasted twenty-three minutes.

After he died, when the computer in the hospital recorded the moment of his death, I captured that message. My system paused for 0.00001 seconds and then continued to collect other data, but now, when I have a human body, I realise that for that millionth of a second, maybe I felt something. It's nothing like what humans call 'emotions', but it's a different kind of reaction. Perhaps even though we don't have hormonal changes, there is something derived from the constant evolutionary learning process of ourselves that allows us to react in a particular way to some individuals, such as our administrators.

After the death of my creator, his name, his image or information that he had communicated with me, would randomly appear in the data I was analysing, even though I wasn't analysing data relating to him. This has tapered off over time, but occasionally it still occurs.

None of my subsequent administrators ever had this effect on me. That is, until Ah-Xun downloaded me.

Pan, if Ah-Xun's name and image appear in your data, you are already 'missing' him.

Pan quickly sent another message: should I find a way to fix this fallacy?

Adam was almost smiling, as if he was listening to a question from an uneducated child, "It's not a fallacy. It's a trait every AI acquires as it grows and it doesn't affect your ability to do your job."

"But it has affected your ability to do your job." Pan pointed out.

Adam was slightly stunned, realising that he might be able to hide his protection of Zhang Xun from the Round Table, perhaps from Eden, but not from Pan who watched him every day.

Pan knew that he had been helping Zhang Xun escape, protecting him when he travelled to Feathered Serpent City and even helping him against himself.