Almost Human

Chapter 8

Veda was pacing outside his door when Andrew woke up the next morning.  He opened the door to find her making a trip across for what looked like the hundredth time, judging by the look on her face. 

“I need to talk to you,” Veda rushed.  After saying this to him, she turned on her heels and walked away.  She paused after walking halfway down the hall.  “And we’re going,” she said as an afterthought.  Andrew sighed and caught up with her.

“Can’t let Sam wait forever,” Veda mumbled as she got into the driver’s seat of Andrew’s car.  He got in passenger, stretching one last time before getting back into the cramped car.  The other car from the day before wasn’t there and didn’t appear as Veda began driving away.

“Do you remember how to get back?” Andrew asked tentatively.  Veda mumbled something indistinguishably.  Andrew thought he heard something about ‘photographic’ one thing or another.  He couldn’t help but laugh a little at her disheveled appearance.  “Everything okay?” he asked lightly.

“Long conversations,” Veda answered, leaving Andrew to contemplate what she meant. 

“So are you going to help them out?” Andrew asked, trying to change the subject and get Veda more focused, seeing as how she was driving him and thus holding his life in her hands. 

“Yes.  Conditionally.  They’re going to hand over all control of the situation to me and not make a move unless I order it.”

“Well, that’s,” Andrew struggled to find the word to fit.  “Nice,” he finished lamely.

“I’m cutting back on casualties.”

“That’s good,” Andrew said, straining his voice to sound nonchalant.

“You know what,” Veda said abruptly, turning to face Andrew and slowing the car to a stop, “I trust you more than either of them.  They remind me of children even though both are over the age of fifty.  Can you believe that?” Veda exclaimed the rhetorical question in exasperation.  “You’re much more sensible and smart.  I like dealing with you, but I have to work out major details of the plan with those two!”

Veda leaned forward as she spoke and waved her hands around to illustrate her points.  Andrew was like a deer in the headlights and found himself unable to move as Veda let out her frustration.  His eyes were wide by the end of her rant.  Veda sighed.

“They’re planning to infiltrate each of the Big Three, starting with General Robotics, and destroy the central processor of each, thus destroying the companies, probably forever.  That’s why Jack is involved since he knows how to break through their security systems.  Ed has the in for General Robotics and knows where the actual central processors are in each company’s headquarters.  They need me to develop a system that will wipe out theirs, make their technicians think that nothing is wrong, and implement a sharing device that will broadcast all of their plans to the public.  Neither one of them knows anything about programming outside of hacking in Jack’s case and behavior encoding for androids in Ed’s case.  If I refused to join, they would have to get someone else to do it which would greatly increase their chance of failure and capture.  It’s unlikely that anyone else can develop something, besides Robin and me, that is completely foolproof and untraceable.  But if I say no, so won’t Robin.  He never takes chances of getting caught unless he knows I’ll be backing him up.”

“So you’re going to wreck three mega-corporations?” Andrew asked solemnly.

“Yes.  And in doing so, I’ll free the government from being under their influence and let people like me or small business entrepreneurs build their own companies, finally.”