It was a cold and rainy night when two young lovers had vanished into the darkness of a park to do as so many had done since time immemorial.
They hurried to the warm and deserted vistor center but a horrific sight greeted them as they rounded the corner to the entrance corridor.
It was a naked female body missing a head. She was covered in a peculiar bluish-green gel-like substance and her neck ended in a bizarrely colored pool of a similar subtance and a glistening dark colored bone was visible, looking broken like a piece of porcelain.
The young people called the police and hurried away, the mood killed for that and a few nights after.
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The police, a two-person outfit reponsible for the security of 14,000 citizens in a managed community, were dumbfounded. This body was artificial. The body of an android. How did it end up in the park, unseen on any camera, sensor, or even security satellite?
They searched for evidence but found none. The body itself was sent to the local University's Artificial Life Lab for analysis but it was slow in coming.
The tech in charge of the analysis, frowned. This was no android. It was a replicant, a very lifelike artificial person. Such things were hideously expensive and employed only the by the richest of individuals. The tech determined that she had been Oleena, Registry no. 8876. Oleena belonged to no-one in particular, rather worked as a security person for one of the beleagured banks in the lawless Sector Two of the Commonwealth.
That gave the tech a cold shiver of worry. The Commonwealth, an interstellar nation 930 light-years from here on Kelisa-4, was both rich and super-powerful. Would they come looking for this one?
Oleena had several injuries not apparent because the nanotech repair cells had healed her outer skin. Under a detail scanner, things looked dramatically different.
The tech frowned in shocked astonishment to see massive damage in the form of some sort of plasmic weapon shot in two places on her abdomen. The cytec inner membrane had literally melted, leaving the corite outer skin to drape over, sagging as it covered the damaged areas.
Her head had been severed by a bladed cutting tool but the tech know of no such tool that could cut through the porcelain-polymer hybrid bones of a Commonwealth-build android.
Her neck bones had been cleanly sheared as if by a laser cutter. There was no tell-tale buing cause by a laser however. This was mystifying.
Oleena's left hand was clenched. The tech used an electrical stimulator to relax it and the hand opened revealing a small datacard held within.
The tech had no means to play this card. The lab was poorly funded and lacked most modern media resouces. He suspected that it might be something Oleena saw and pocketed it. It could be the key to finding her head.
There was nothing the tech could do for Oleena's body. It was beyond his skill to repair the artficial muscle called cytec. He tagged it as if it was a real dead body and stored it in the University's morgue area. He knew of someone who could help, someone from the Commonweath. He got on the maglev train to the Upper Hill section of the managed community, hoping that she was home.
Rela Kesen had been a police officer of some sort in the Commonwealth's affluent and peaceful Sector One. She had retired after 800 years of service and came to Kelisa-4 to live. Its managed communities were clean and safe despite being under constant threat from the Asikiwa. The tech told her what had happened and gave her the datacard.
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She said that she would help find out what befell poor Oleena and retreated into her home's library to look at the card.
As soon as she put it into the player, the wallscreen flickered on and displayed a beautiful dark blonde female, obviously Oleena.
She spoke with a voice that matched her appearance but softly. "I am Oleena, Number 8876. I work in the Community Bank in the Elin Building, 5th Floor in Esadan on the planet Mira. I recorded this just prior to the supposed attack on my employer's facilities all over Mira and other worlds, such as Kasyn and Mell."
Rela frowned. These were lawless, crime-ridden worlds. Any attempts a policing them always failed due to the sophistication of the criminal element. She wondered if replicants got scared. Oleena sure looked it.
She continued. "We had recieved a warning from the Mira Civil Authority and the Commonwealth government this morning that a gang of high-tech criminals calling themselves 'The Reavers'. We have enacted security measures and will close the bank if necessary. I fear for my safety. I cannot leave the bank, my program forbids it. On this datacard is a tracker program for any modern sensor array that will find my head, which contains my AI and memories. If you should find this. I am no doubt badly damaged or-," she paused, very obviously worried. "Destroyed."
Rela was astonished. A tear dripped from Oleena's eyes.
How advanced was she? Rela downloaded the tracker program into a sensor array she had access to on the Commonwealth world of Amiris, not far from Mira.
It took only 5 minutes to scan a 22 square light-year area and several star systems. A hit was recorded in a trash dump on Mira, in an area awaiting recycling. There was no time to lose. Rela hurried to the spaceport and got her ship out of storage, leaving at once.
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The male of indeterminate species was totally covered in protective equipment and garments. He looked at Rela through darkly tinted eye goggles. "You're looking for what?"
Rela showed him a photo-image she pulled from the footage of Oleena. "Her, or rather, her head. She's an android. Her source program has been detected out there." She pointed to the massive pile of plastics of every kind behind them.
He chuckled. "You have less than 2 hours before that goes into the mixer. I suggest you hurry. Here." He handed her a weird looking detector. "Tune that to whatever material you're looking for. I suggest either cytec or corite. If you need me, just depress the commpad in your left glove and speak loudly into it."
He used a zip line and was pulled up to a very tall control tower above them.
Rela frowned inside her yellow visitor's helmet. She wore a yellow suit with disturbingly significant armored panels that made it hard to bend over.
The gloves were too big for her small hands but she managed with the assist of a inner-frame controller that worked an exo-frame that covered the gloves outside, facilitating movement.
She looked at the detector, which had a bright white screen despite its dirty yellow plastic outer covering. Its buttons were large and clearly marked. She pressed 'menu' and a list of materials appeared. She selected 'corite', the artificial skin material, and the screen blanked. It told her to hold the detector up high and sweep it all around her.
It was a struggle in the suit but she did and it beeped really loudly, startling her, causing her to almost drop it. She fumbled with it but managed to get a good grip and looked at the screen.
The detector said that a significant concentration of corite was just 15 feet away from her, to her left. She looked and scoffed, exasperated. There was a pile of plastic there taller than most houses and as big.
A rumble from above made her look up. Drops of rain fell onto her helmet's faceplate. She angrily used the suit's sleeve to wipe it off. She hooked the detector to her belt and went to the pile, opening the telescoping claw-stick suppiled with her suit.
The rain intensified as she dug into the plastic, carving a hole big enough for her to crawl through with the claw-stick's tiny lasers. Steam rose from the work, fogging up the helmet's faceplate.
Rela angrily wiped it off and stopped. Oleena's head lay in a clear plastic bag tied with a red and yellow money bag seal from a bank. It was in the hole she had made in the plastic.
She looked up, fearing a collapse but it held against the rain.
Rela crawled in, feeling awkward in the big suit. Her small frame didn't help. She stretched out with the claw-stick and closed its claws on the bag. She pulled it towards her and started to back out.
The massive pile suddenly shifted, causing her to yelp in suprised horror. It instantly collapsed all around her. She screamed as massive weight bore down on her, the suit's smart armor constricting all around her, protecting her.
Rela lay on her belly in the suit, cursing her own stupidity. She should have known better. She couldn't move at all, her arms and handsbefore her, right glove clutching the claw-stick tightly.
Tears came as she realized that the commpanel in the left glove was buried in the plastic. There was no was to call for help.
To live for nearly 900 years only to end up crushed by a trash pile.
Rela's dark thoughts were interrupted as the plastic all around her shuddered violently. Was the two hours up already? New horror flooded through her.
Something thick and heavy closed around her waist and she was yanked out of the plastic with considerable force. She struggled to hold onto the claw-stick and not look down as she was pulled high into the air with sudden speed. She was swung through the air and slowly descended to the ground, the pressure around her waist suddenly releasing.
A thick gloved hand helped her up. "Got it, eh?," asked the male worker.
Rela sniffed and chuckled as she held up the bag. "Yup. Almost got lost myself."
He patted her on the helmet. "Naw, ya didn't. Had my eye on you all the time. Are ya okay?"
She nodded inside the helmet. "Yes, thank you."
"Good. Just follow the pathway back to the office station. Glad I could help." He vanished back up the zip line suddenly.
Rela smiled as she watched him soar through the air and started back to the office station.
Once free of that suit, Rela spent 15 minutes under the hot shower in the changing room. She then changed back into her normal clothes and took Oleena's head back to her ship, promptly returning home.
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She did not return to the lab. She took Oleena's head back to her home and carefully washed it free of the cytec and dirt it somehow collected.
Oleena's blank grey eyes did not betray the horror seen on the datacard. She was remarkably undamaged, at leat, this part of her was. Without a power source, she was "offline". Looking too much like a life size doll.
She took it to the lab where an unfamiliar white suited male tech from a place called Cerena Artificial Life Lab, stood, putting finishing touches on Oleena's body as it lay on a work table.
He turned to look at Rela. "Oh! You've found her?"
Rela nodded, handing the silk bag she put the head in to him. "Yes. Can you fix her?"
The tech smiled. "You bet. They only shot her. No big deal."
Rela's mouth fell open, shocked. "No big deal? Her head was cut off."
He nodded cheerfully. "Yup. See? Watch this." He took the head to the top of Oleena's body and carefully placed it down in the correct position.
Rela watched in wonder as the cytec and corite visibly moved and melded together, her skin reknitting itself around her neck with no sign of the injury. There was a series of heavy clicks and a buzzing sound.
Oleena visibly shuddered all over, flexing her hands and feet. She sat up suddenly, blinking. "Hello? Where am I?," she asked.
Rela smiled. "You are in the Kelis University Robotics Lab. I am Rela Kesen, former police investigator of Sakina. I live here on Kelisa-4 now."
Oleena covered her body modestly. The tech gave her a robe to put on and she did quickly. "Kelisa-4? I do not know of that world."
"Its 900 light-years Near-Rimward of the Sector Three border of the Commonwealth. Do you need a ride home?," Rela asked.
Oleena frowned and looked down. "I have no home now. My bank was destroyed in an antimatter explosion set by the criminals. Under my ownership contract, should my place of employment be terminated, I am a free person. I have nowhere to go but to the Android Enclave on Katrina." She said this last with obvious contempt.
Rela shook her head. "You can stay with me. I have a large, nice house. I could use the company."
Oleena looked at the tech as he left with a good-bye. She looked back at Rela. "You would do that for me?"
Rela nodded. "Sure. You are a person, aren't you? Come on, I'll get you something to wear."
They left the robotics lab and went into the city. A broken doll whole again, Oleena was happy to stay with Rela and learned a a lot from her.
� 25 Feb 04 Gregory Thompson