Deep Black Road: The Head of the Snake

Chapter 16

Dr. Shamir stopped, and stared unseeing at the control screen floating in front of him.

Yes, Master, he thought. Your plan was not just for Ricky, which is why you told me to wait. There is another; and that one will complete my task.

As he had planned from the beginning, he carefully and thoroughly deleted all of his digital files having to do with sparks, and put the related paper documents in the disposal for vaporization-the painstaking labour of so many years. The machines themselves he would destroy once this last task was complete.

The public had his research on hyper-quantum states; but no-one should ever be able to duplicate his work on spark transfer.

His master had given him this assignment fifteen years before in a vision; and it was almost complete. These special robots, his master had said, would become medicine for the healing of the world.

But how can that be? he wondered.

#

He drove to the hospital-not one associated with the extensive University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, but the very discrete and private Tellman Clinic over on Millennium Drive.

Who is this one? he wondered as he strode across the clinic's parking lot.

Politely acknowledging the receptionist at the front desk as he passed, he headed down to the ICU waiting area, where he found a man and woman standing together, stone-faced.

"Good evening," he said to them. "I am Dr. Ibrahim Shamir. What is troubling you?"

The man looked up. "Good evening, Doctor. I'm Bennett Harrington; and this is my wife Amelia." He glanced towards the doors to the ICU. "Suzanne, our daughter, was in a terrible accident a little while ago; and now she's in there in a coma. The chief surgeon's just told us that he's done everything he can for her, but she'll never recover."

"I am sorry," Dr. Shamir said. "However, there is something that I am able to offer. Do you know of one Richard Sheppard?"

They shook their heads.

"Come. Let us go to the conference room over here, and I will tell you about him."

#

"Oh, it's getting late," Lisa said reluctantly to Ricky as they sat by the window. "I'd better be going." She got to her feet.

"Thanks so much for coming over all the time like this," he said, laboriously standing up. "It means a lot to me."

"I know. I can't imagine what it's like for you, especially you being a new robot and all; so I want to help out. And besides, it's fun listening to those stories from the books you've got in your head, uh, memory-you know what I mean!"

"Sure. I'm glad you like them."

"We don't have any books here besides the Sacred Writings; and they're soooo boring."

"Oh, I don't know. I find them pretty interesting. Maybe I should start reading them to you."

She shrugged. "Yeah, whatever. See you tomorrow?"

"Sure. 'Bye."

Once she'd gone, Ricky sat back down, and dropped the Atlanta Braves cap onto the floor beside him-he only wore it when someone was around.

Turning to his bookmark in the second biographical story of the Anointed One in the Writings, he read of a blind man who asked to see again; and of course the Anointed One healed him.