Black Eyes

Chapter 18

"And so?" Eva asked, waking Ethan from his vivid dream. He looked scared and looked around for a few seconds. A small crowd had gathered to listen to him, Julia had come closer to hear better.

"So I won" he murmured.

"It still doesn't explain how I was created" Eva snorted.

"Well that came later" Ethan continued to mutter.

Everyone's eyes were focused on his figure curled up in the armchair.

"The same day they made me sign an employment contract and a confidentiality contract. Then they assigned me the Project-Eva. They didn't give me many explanations. They ordered me to build a war machine, from scratch" Ethan looked at Eva for a few seconds, then started scratching the cuticles on his fingers.

Nakir kept his gaze fixed on those tapered fingers, another characteristic elven trait, and he could hardly believe he was in front of the true creator of a work of biotechnology on the scale of Eva.

Ethan took a deep breath and continued.

"In the contract there was written that at the end of the project, once tested, I would earn four hundred thousand djil. It meant settling me and Mariah forever so I took the job"

Eva narrowed her eyes. Ethan noticed, but continued his story.

"They gave me a lab coat that basically touched the floor and took me to my own laboratory. I was over the moon, I didn't know what I was really doing" he looked Eva in the eyes and she looked away, watching Julia that was standing next to her.

"I studied the mechanics and biotechnology manuals that were in the laboratory for hours and hours and only after a few days and a notebook full of notes did I begin to create. They gave me a lab partner. He was about twenty-five years old, but he was slow and didn't understand my instructions. I had Zayfir called to ask her to send him away and she said the lab was mine and it was my job to choose any helpers. I fired him the same day and out of spite the man, Adrian if I'm not wrong, spilled coffee on my notes. I sent him to hell and hung up all the papers to dry. They were ruined but still readable.

After three weeks spent recreating the titanium core and the muscle fibres with very elastic tubes, the body complex was almost complete. Only the mind was missing.

It took me almost two weeks to find a solution that wasn't metatronic, but biotechnological, but piece by piece and a few failed attempts I managed to create your wonderful brain. Your synapses are free to travel in a gelatinous substance superconducting electrical impulses and before inserting it into the skull I entered some information on how to find me, my address, the description of the house. I wanted my creation to come back to visit me or at least feel the impulse. The brain was the part I was most proud of. Damn Eva." he said breathlessly turning to the android "Your brain can do more than forty million calculations per second. You are the perfection of biotechnology, at least with the knowledge we possess now. You are a spectacle of mechanics and biotechnology, your brain is programmed to detect in a few thousandths of a second any change in the environment and coordinate an immediate response... and now I learn that you have feelings!" he said, out of breath, nodding his head towards Julia.

The girl with long hair still wet from the puddle in which she had fallen asleep was suddenly embarrassed. Eva was created without feelings.

What did I do to make her like me so much? Julia thought as she silently admired Eva.

Ethan curled up on his knees and to Nakir's surprise he began to cry, but he was hiding a full smile.

He was proud of what he had created and above all he was ecstatic that his creation made decisions for itself, that it felt something similar to affection for someone else.