Duplicate Minds

Twenty

Instead of going straight to his dorm, Rajeev found himself heading to the entertainment lounge instead. Although he'd been gone only a few days, he was surprised to find he missed the motley crew of androids who had helped him escape. He barely knew them, but they'd been bonded by circumstance, each of them imprisoned in corporate-owned artificial bodies that made them look like monsters. They were freaks, and all they had in this corporate wasteland was each other.

At the same time, he was nervous to face them. After all, he'd left as their supposed savior, escaping the confines of this prison to find help for those he'd left behind. The only thing they would find more dispiriting than him never returning was him returning empty-handed, without a single morsel of hope for them. And that's exactly how he was returning now.

As he approached the glass walls, he made out a sole occupant—an android sitting on the couch, legs crossed, engrossed in a worn paperback book.

He opened the door and crept in quietly. The android failed to look up, and Rajeev wondered whether it was because it didn't notice he'd entered, or didn't care.

"Hi," he said. "And you are . . . ?"

The android looked up from the book, but did not yet look up at Rajeev. It processed the voice it had just heard as if it was a remnant from a long-forgotten dream.

"Rajeev?" Natalie's voice, soft and mellifluous, flowed out of the android's mouth.

"Yeah, it's me," he said. "Hi Natalie."

She leapt off the couch; the book fell to the floor. "What are you doing here? What happened? Did they catch you? What the hell!"

He refused to say anything until she sat back down. Once she was settled, he took a seat beside her. His first inclination was to lie; to claim that he had, indeed, been caught by his son's operatives. If it had been any of the other androids seated next to him, he may have said exactly that. But for some reason, Natalie was able to draw the truth out of him.

"I escaped," he said. "It was all going fine. They took me to some grad student's place, a programming whiz, and he was able to disable the failsafe so I could move again. Then they took me to my daughter's . . . wife's . . . house. But they found me there."

"Who found you? NLT?"

"No. Fresh Meat."

"Fresh Meat? But how would they—why would they—"

"They knew I was Dev's son. I don't know how they knew, but they did. And they wanted to use me to get information on NLT. They asked me to crawl back here and gather any information I could find—any information they could use to rid themselves of their strongest competition."

Natalie nodded her head encouragingly.

"It makes sense for them to come to you. 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'"

Rajeev shook his head. "Fresh Meat is arguably even more repugnant than NLT."

"So you refused to spy for them?"

Rajeev hesitated. "They threatened my family. I had no choice."

Natalie reached out and placed her arm on his knee. "Oh, Rajeev. I'm sorry. That's terrible."

"I didn't know what else to do. If I want to keep my family safe I have to at least look like I'm making an effort to spy on my son." Talking about it now exposed emotions Rajeev hadn't even realized were bubbling beneath the surface. If he'd had eyes, they would have teared up. "I didn't want to tell this to any of you, but . . . I don't know. It feels good to tell someone."

"I'm sure it does." She stood. "I don't know what to tell you, though. It looks like you're screwed."

"Tell me about it."

"It's okay, though. We'll all do what we can to help."

"What do you mean?"

"We'll help you gather any intel we can find."

"I can't ask you guys to do that."

"You didn't have to ask. Besides—any scrutiny we can put on NLT increases our chances of getting out of here. In my opinion, we should focus on taking down NLT and then worry about Fresh Meat. I know you may not ascribe to the notion, but I do, so I'll say it again: 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.'"

***

Natalie promised Rajeev she'd spread the word to the other androids about the need for a secret espionage campaign. In the meantime, they returned to their respective dormitories.

As he lay down on his bed, Rajeev found himself questioning whether any of them would find any useful dirt on the company. Next Level Technologies was a state-of-the-art tech company, likely outfitted with the most advanced security technology known to humankind. The likelihood of a bunch of nobodies in robot bodies discovering anything of significance seemed slim.

Still, he had to try. He couldn't let anything happen to Sarah or Mira. If something did happen, he'd never forgive himself. He tried to think of what he could do on his own to gain any useful intel, but nothing came to mind. He hoped the other androids were having better luck.

He came to a conclusion: He wasn't going to get anywhere sitting in his bed staring up at the ceiling. He needed to wander around, even if he didn't have a plan. Maybe he could discover something just by stumbling upon it. He got up, walked to the door and emerged from his dorm hesitantly. He meandered down the building's industrial gray halls, unsure of where to go. He was more familiar with this floor than any of the others, and he hadn't noticed any opportunities for espionage, so he thought he'd be more productive on a different level. Once on the elevator, he studied the floor number buttons, then selected one at random to press: Thirty-five.

The elevator beeped and a robotic voice came over hidden speakers built into its ceiling: "Invalid operation."

"What the hell?" Rajeev pressed the button once more, but again, the same monotone voice came over the speakers: "Invalid operation."

"Daniel?" The virtual assistant appeared in the corner of the elevator.

"Hi Rajeev," he said cheerily. "How can I be of assistance?"

"What's wrong with this elevator?"

Daniel furrowed his brow, suddenly looking concerned. "What seems to be the trouble with it?"

"When I press the floor button," he said, pressing the button for a different floor this time, "I get this message." They listened together as the elevator again announced that Rajeev was attempting an "invalid operation."

"It appears your elevator permissions have been disabled," Daniel said.

"My 'elevator permissions?' What the hell does that mean?"

"Everyone on the Next Level Technologies campus has a radio-frequency identification, or RFID, chip to grant them access to different areas of the campus. It also grants access to the elevators. You and the other androids have the chip built into your bodies. It appears the privileges on your particular RFID chip have been altered, granting you permission to only two floors: the sixth and the twelfth."

"So I have access to my dorm and the entertainment lounge, and that's it."

"And any other amenities found on those two floors. Yes."

"How do I change it back?"

"You can't. Only a system administrator can change these permissions."

A system administrator. Like Dev, probably. His son's words suddenly echoed in his head: Don't expect to have all the same freedoms you did before.

So that's what he'd meant. Rajeev wasn't allowed to move about the building as he'd been able to before. That made any kind of substantive corporate espionage impossible.

He had to figure something out, though, because failure wasn't an option if he wanted to keep his family safe.