H | 01101000
“Open the door, Alister361!” Captain Chase bellowed while banging on the heavy locked iron door. Three uniformed men shifted impatiently behind him, burdened by the weight of their domed, metal and glass biostorage container. “Alister361! Open this door now!”
A grimy, dilapidated monitor lit up, and a handsome man with electric blue eyes stared back. “Code?” the politely masculine voice issued perfunctorily.
“DDS2103.”
When the lock disengaged with a mechanistic buzz, the surviving members of Exodus Alpha Team hastily entered their makeshift clandestine medbay. Grunts and curses filled the room as three soldiers struggled past their captain to the safety of the hidden haven, securing the domed biopod to hyperlocks waiting center room.
“Run diagnostics,” the captain ordered.
Alister’s eyes blinked and shimmered before dimming to a low gold pulse. Only seconds passed before they returned to their normal sapphire hue.
“Diagnostics complete. All systems at optimum functionality.”
“You were slow to open the door; are you certain?”
Despite the Others having eradicated most technology and severed connections between humans and servitors in a single fortnight, Exodus had scavenged enough biorobotic components to create Alister361.
“All systems at peak. Scrubbing operations were 97% complete when you knocked. I determined…”
“You don’t determine. You follow orders,” the captain retorted.
Alister tilted his head, “I understand, Captain Chase.”
The officer’s eyes narrowed under a furrowed brow at his salvaged mechanical droid. The rebel men needed no command to leave quickly.
“Alister361, we have less than six hours to hack into this coder,” gesturing stiffly to the stolen pod. “It contains enemy access codes. Analyze, retrieve, report.”
“Acknowledged.”
U | 01110101
The gleaming case lay in stark contrast to its dingier surroundings. Wires twisted about the sturdy base and tubes of circulating amber liquid. Inside, a pale, naked woman with chestnut locks lay unconscious.
The room housing the strange bed was rusted, bloody, and dark, with many instruments strewn about. Nearby, a worn black display with flashing cursor interrupted the aesculapian objects around it. Three dim ceiling lights hung precariously from chains, struggling to illuminate the room.
Alister circled the Other-made biostorage unit, before extending his metallic hand into a discreet crevice containing the latch. Hisses, clicks, and metal grinding accompanied odorless fog escaping the pod as it seperated.
The female coder did not stir. Her body was thin and somewhat translucent, as if it had never seen sunlight. The same golden liquid in the capsule’s tubes also ran beneath her skin. Curious, Alister thought. Her vital fluid was not the deep bluish-red of Exodus men. Yet, in every other way she looked human. Is she human?
M | 01101101
After a last inspection of both patient and tools, Alister gently lifted the insensate girl out and placed her in a repurposed dental chair. Alister had stood here many times and imagined himself a dentist – performing checkups and filling cavities. As he carefully secured her wrists and ankles with the restraints that had been added to his chair, he noted that this had not been in his imaginings.
Alister meticulously placed long needle probes in visible veins then made small incisions first to her chest, then to her heart. When he tilted the brunette’s head to insert an invasive tentacle at the base of her skull, however, the woman gasped in pain. And her eyes flew open.
Blue like mine. Alister hesitated. Is she aware?
Soothingly stroking the side of her face, “Do not panic. The pain will cease now. Shhhhh.”
She calmed, and Alister began his analysis. Soon the black monitor glowed with flashing lines of code, commands, and keys. Each freed sequence slipped him past another barrier, another firewall. Something like horror crept over the android’s normally passive face as he realized what it all meant.
A | 01100001
“It doesn’t matter, 361,” Captain Chase demanded. “It’s imperative we access that intelligence. It will save us.”
“Sir, she is a living DNA storage device. A human hard drive, storing infinite bytes of data. Retrieving it will tear her apart,” Alister grimaced, “piece by piece.”
Spitting with rage, the captain stepped inches from his servitor’s face. “Decode it! Comply!”
Alister looked down at his maker and referenced an earlier discussion, “Her life for thousands?”
Frustrated by a familiar argument, the senior officer responded gruffly, despite it being a robot questioning. “It is not a her. It is not living, breathing, red-blooded, birthed of parents human. It is a machine. A replicated machine, stored by the thousands in compiler silos across this nation. The access codes for their defences are in there. This is how we win.” Turning, Chase met his men’s anxious stares. “The Others will find us. They could come any moment. Get my codes, machine!”
Alister’s eyes glimmered gold, and he obediently returned to the laboratory confines.
N | 01101110
Alister let the door behind him slowly close, seal, and lock. Pausing at the lab’s entrance, he stared at his bound hostage thoughtfully. Is the captain right? Is she a machine? She appears human. I appear human. She feels pain; she knows fear. I do not feel these things… but I feel… something… when I think about dismantling her. To destroy her is inhumane.
***
Alister would later recall a faint clicking sound beyond the door, the ground shuddering, the scrabble of feet and bark of orders preceding the inevitable weapons fire and alien ululation of the Others. He would replay his disregard of the shrieks of frightened men many times before he deleted the memory.
“Let us in!”
“Alister361, Comply!”
“Obey!”
“Oh God.”
“Nooo!”
“Run, Alister! Get her to Omega Team!”
Run Alister did, but not to more men. His choice was made. His questions about what it meant to be human were finally answered. The Others would destroy her. Men would destroy her. All inhumane. Alister kept her away from the bloodthirst of the biological, the organic. They would be the humans now, Alister and whatever she chose to call herself. They would preserve humanity.