The Creation of Amy Read online

  “Amy; you’re right, Spectra,” Nick nodded.

  Spectra leaned back, stretching out an arm over the back of the bench, and smiled, “I know. The signal is coming right from where she is. Was there any computers with her?”

  “No, not that I saw,” Nick said. “And, she seemed very normal, and she is really cute; I’d drop some serious coin for a girl like that if I could buy one at BestBuy!” He chortled and gave a light backhand to Delaney’s elbow for emphasis.

  “Listen,” Spectra said, “I could set up a remote computer near Morse’s building, then relay that info to my main computer at my apartment and try hacking her remotely. Since I have never seen anything like this before, I will need some time.”

  “We could just break-in, and steal her,” suggested Delaney.

  “Are you kidding? I’ll bet she could beat your ass,” Spectra pointed out.

  Larry said, “Oh, yeah, also, Morse has a lot of security around his building. Cameras, silent alarms—we couldn’t get the code to his garage door opener because he changes it all the time.”

  “Yeah,” Spectra agreed. “Listen, give me more time, set up the remote link; then wait till Morse is asleep before trying this.”

  “We’re going to try this tonight, okay? And, if we get her, you will reprogram her to do what I says. Got it?”

  Josh grinned, “Sounds like fun! But we’re doing it my way, and hacking takes time. We will start tonight, but I can’t promise anything. If I may ask, what are you going to program her to do?”

  Delaney stated, “I’ll have you program her to beat some guys down for me, mainly Coronado guys.”

  Josh laughed, “Okay, I’ll do my best.”

  ✽✽✽

  Amy, Phillips, and Morse left the diner and went to Morse’ android workshop. While still outside, Phillips pulled a couple of guitars out of his truck and brought them into the lab. He gave one to Amy after she sat down and instructed her how to hold it and where to position of her fingers on the strings.

  Morse clapped, “Ha! I can’t wait to see you teach her that!”

  Amy was able to get all the basics but got to a point where she could not. Therefore, Phillips did more programing with Amy to get the guitar. He then worked for a bit on her internet query program and reconstructed some of her firewalls. Half-way through one of the firewalls, he got tired. He got up, stretched, and looked at Stephanie’s body in progress. Morse had been making the molds for Stephanie’s muscles, a time consuming, and tedious process.

  He announced, “Hey, I’m going home, don’t stay up too late, okay?”

  Morse was in a creative trance and just waved backhandedly to Phillips. Phillips then left the building, got in his car, and drove away. It was about eleven o’clock on a Wednesday night, and Nick and Larry were in the Lincoln Continental watching Morse’ building. A remote computer system was set up in the car and connected to Josh’s computer. Now they were just waiting for Morse to go to bed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Morse toiled for a while longer creating molds for Stephanie’s muscles, actually making the muscles, and then testing each one. Stephanie’s body was hanging from the same hanger Amy’s body had during her construction. There was a lot left of her to do, but since Morse had experience, along with time to work on it, accomplishing them was much faster with Stephanie. Morse became frustrated when he could not get one of the larger leg muscles to form right, so he quit for the night.

  Amy remained sitting in her chair unmoving with her eyes wide open on timed blinking and observing Morse the entire time.

  He smiled at her fondly, pulled up a chair facing her, sat, and said, “Hi, Amy.”

  “Hi, Father,” she said to him with a soft smile.

  “I’m proud of you. I never really thought you would be such a success for me. You saved my life, hon, and I thank you. I can easily say that I love you more than my car.”

  As he chuckled, Amy smiled more.

  “No, seriously,” he continued, “I know you’re just a machine, but I spend so much of my time and money on you, I actually do think of you as my daughter, and I love you.”

  “I love you too, Father,” Amy answered. She turned to Stephanie’s skeleton and asked, “What is that you are working on? I asked earlier, but you did not give me an answer.”

  “That is your new sister, Stephanie. She is another android just like you.”

  “Another android that is just like me?”

  “Yes,” Morse affirmed with a nod.

  “Why are you making her?”

  “It is because Uncle Mike wanted one of his own. He’s helping me program you, so I’m helping him create his daughter’s body.”

  “Stephanie is Uncle Mike’s daughter? Then Stephanie is my cousin, not my sister,” she concluded.

  Morse smiled again, “Hun, you’re androids, it’s different. She’s your sister.”

  “I understand, Father. Why did you make me? What is my purpose?”

  Morse thought for a moment, “Because I could, because events in my life seemed to lead me to the conclusion that I’m meant to make you, and also I just needed something in my life to keep me busy so I didn’t go crazy.

  “I had a wife a few years ago, but she had been taken from me, she was carrying my child when she passed. It was hard on me; I like to think now that you are my child.”

  “I am your child.”

  Morse hugged her and she hugged back extra tightly.

  Morse released their embrace, “Wow, you’re a strong girl! Easy on old Dad,” he joked.

  “I’m sorry, Father.”

  “Okay, dear. I’m going to bed, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight, Father.”

  “Sleep,” he said, and Amy closed her eyes.

  Morse smiled, he felt for the first time his previous hell was worth all the pain that lead him to now. He switched off all of the lights in lab, rechecked the lock of the front door, activated the alarm as every other night, and went upstairs to bed.

  ✽✽✽

  In the parked Lincoln, Nick and Larry reported to Delaney on the phone.

  Nick said, “Okay, the lights are out downstairs.”

  They waited, and ten minutes later, they could see the upstairs lights go out, and reported again to Delaney.

  Delaney told them, “Go out and spray-paint the lenses of the outside cameras; wear ski masks. Then get in the car and wait for my instructions.”

  “Understood,” confirmed Nick, as he shook a can of black paint, and slipping on his ski mask.

  Larry got out the car with Nick. “All clear,” he said. Opening the trunk, he took out a stepladder, and together they ran to each of the cameras and sprayed each one as though they were experts. When they were finished, he put the ladder back into the trunk.

  Larry again affirmed softly, “All clear,” and was inside the car again a moment before some traffic rolled through the street.

  An hour passed and now it is about one in the morning, Morse was deep asleep, and Delaney said to Spectra, “Do it.”

  Josh put his hacking skills to work and began to get into Amy’s brain. After a moment passed he said, “Well, I see a firewall, pretty formidable stuff. But, I’ve hacked worse.”

  After about fifteen minutes of furious typing, Spectra, shaking his head, said, “Yeah, these guys have passwords everywhere. I sent a Trojan in, and it’s starting to disable their firewall.”

  Another fifteen minutes passed and Spectra jumped in his seat, “Bam! I’m in! Ha! You’re lucky, looks like someone was in the process of reprogramming her internet protocols and left a pathway open which was all I needed.” He beamed triumphantly.

  In the lab, Amy’s eyes opened and darted back and forth.

  Josh went on, “Okay, I can’t believe this, but I can see through her eyes and hear through her ears, but it looks like they have an alarm of some kind. I have to disengage her voice-box.”

  In the lab, “Father, Father,” Amy yelled.

  Delaney and Sp
ectra heard this through their computer and Delaney shrieked, “Shut her up!”

  “I’m working on it!” Spectra spat back. “There!”

  Amy was still trying to yell, but Spectra disengaged her voice box. He next succeeded to shut down her cognitive functions and Amy stopped trying to yell, stilled, and now had a vacant countenance.

  Spectra kept digging around and found something. “Oh, hell yeah, a voice interface,” he said, rubbing his hands together like a greedy thief. He turned to Delaney, “I can give her commands, and she will do them.”

  Nick conferred with Delaney on the phone, “Are the lights still out upstairs?”

  Nicked checked the windows again. “Yep,” he nodded as though Delaney could see him too.

  Delaney then said to Josh, “Get her out the front door.”

  Josh then spoke into the microphone, “Walk to the front door.”

  Amy stood in the darkness of the lab, able to see everything because she had night vision, and began to walk forward with the computer plug still in her neck. The cord reached its end and snagged her for a brief second until the cord popped out, and she continued by the Dodge to the front door, and then stopped, staring at the door.

  Delaney asked, “How does she know how to do that when you cut off her cognitive functions?”

  “Well, she has higher and lower cognitive functions, I just cut out the higher ones, so she just does what I’m telling her, drawing from her memory. But, now we have to find out if she knows the alarm combo.”

  “Do you think she does?”

  “Well, if they didn’t actually teach her, there’s a chance she oversaw the code put in at one time, all I can do is try. If she can’t do it, she won’t.”

  “Okay, one way, or another, we have to get her in the car quick.”

  He called Nick and Larry, “Listen, she’s at the front door. Swing the car around so it’s directly in front of the door.”

  “Got it,” Nick replied through the phone. Then he parked the car in front of the door.

  Delaney said to Josh, “Okay, tell her.”

  Spectra in turn, spoke to Amy through the microphone, “Disarm the alarm system.”

  Amy’s right hand moved over the key pad, and then froze. Josh and Vincent were watching the monitor, seeing through Amy’s perspective, and then a second smaller window popped up within her vision.

  Josh pointed, “She’s scanning her memory. These guys are good. I’ll bet if we were to try this any other time, we wouldn’t be able to do this.”

  Amy found the memory that contained the alarm code, she punched it in, and the alarm disarmed.

  “Yes!” Delaney celebrated, “You did it, Spectra! Okay, now get her to get in the car.”

  Spectra said to Amy, “Okay, Amy, open the door, walk through it quietly, shut the door behind you, and get into the back seat of the black car waiting outside.”

  Amy obeyed and got into the back seat of the waiting Continental. Larry was sitting in the back, and when Amy got in, he reached over her and closed the door, and in his excitement of the moment, slammed it.

  The slam woke Morse, still upstairs in bed. Panic washed over him, he then quickly put on his pants while looking out the window. He saw the black Lincoln speed off down the road. Half asleep and barefoot, he ran down the stairs, turned on the lights. Amy was gone and the alarm was disabled. He opened the garage door, sat in the Charger, started it, and it roared to life. He fired up the dashboard computer; backed out of the garage, made sure the garage door closed, and sped off down the road after the black car.

  With this being the outlying areas of New York City, these were not heavily trafficked streets this late at night. He used the computer now to activate the GPS in Amy’s brain. He altered it already to be able to find Amy if it were necessary. A map popped up on the display showing the relative position of the Charger and Amy. Since these people disappeared into the city and had a good lead now, this was his only hope. He was speeding through the city streets until he could see the thieves because he had not got close enough to read their license plate.

  The Continental headed into a busier area with some taxis bobbing and weaving. Nick hoped to lose Morse.

  Larry looked back, “Holy shit, Nick! That damn Charger’s nearly on our ass!”

  “I’m not sure how he found us,” Nick said. He said through the phone to Delaney, “Hey, Vince, he has caught up to us. He’s in a black Charger and I can’t shake him.”

  “Lose him however you can!” Delaney demanded. To Josh he said, “What the hell?”

  Spectra typed a couple of seconds. “Well, Doctor, you have a tracking device on your little girl. Let’s just turn that off. That is probably how he was able to catch up to your boys so fast.”

  To Nick through the phone Delaney said, “Lose him now, he won’t find you again.”

  Morse was now driving faster than he ever had in the busy streets of the city, weaving, and making high speed turns to keep up with the black Lincoln. He was furious, pushing his engine to its limits.

  Just then, a group of three taxicabs appeared ahead of the chase, so Nick saw an opportunity to cut him off. He cut in front of two cabs by moving from one lane to another, which caused them to turn to avoid an accident. On the other side, there was construction, and the Lincoln flew past the cabs though the intersection and down the road. Morse pressed hard on the breaks and turned left to avoid the rear cab. The Charger’s back quarter panel on its right side hit the back of the cab, twisting the vehicle’s direction the opposite way, missing the Jersey barriers only by a fraction, so the Charger and the one cab drove side by side. Now there were two cabs directly in the way of Morse. He honked the horn as he saw the Lincoln escaping, but the cab driver only gave him the finger and called him an asshole. The foreign, possibly Middle Easterner, cab driver could not understand what was happening to Morse.

  Getting out of the Charger, he broke the window of the cab, punched the driver in the face, and opened the door, put the taxi in drive, and let it roll away. He returned to his seat in the Charger and roared after the Lincoln, but he noticed his GPS fix on Amy was gone. He sped down the streets and avenues trying desperately to figure out where they went. New York City was a maze of complicated, crammed streets, and usually full of construction and taxicabs even at night.

  The Lincoln was gone. On a side street where Morse had his last feeling that they might have gone, he stopped. He beat the steering wheel with his hands, “Damn it! Damn it!” He got out of the car and looked around. There were so many black cars, so many that all look the same. He did not know where they were going, so now his creation was even stolen from him. He had not put insurance on her yet either. The unreality of the moment made him numb.

  He recalled punching a cab driver, and shocked he did it, but he was so close to catching her. If those damn cabs had not been there, he would have caught up to the Lincoln and he would have forced it off the road with ferocity. Morse laughed with a bitter snarl, he was glad he punched that terrorist cab driver. He felt like crying, he felt like killing someone, he did not know what to do or feel.

  A couple of NYPD cruisers pull up to the back of Morse’ Charger, and cops got out with their guns drawn.

  They ordered with authority, “Put your hands on the back of your head and get down to the ground, now!”

  Morse complied. What was the point of telling the cops he had property stolen from him, after all, they could not even find murderers and rapists. They arrested him and his car was impounded.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Lincoln Continental drove into an abandoned warehouse controlled by Cipriano and Nick and Larry got out of the car. Larry opened the left passenger door, but Amy remained sitting. Delaney told Nick to drive the Continental to Spectra’s apartment and the two cronies complied. When they arrived, Nick picked up Amy and brought her through the apartment complex, into the living room near Spectra’s main computer, and threw her down on the couch.

  Delaney stood
up and slapped Nick on the head, “Be careful with her, you idiot,” he snapped. “She’s more valuable than you are!”

  Josh got up from the computer, studied her for a moment, and gasped, “Whoa!” Then he turned to Delaney, “I’ll bet this girl is worth a fortune. Morse spared no expense on this; literally, what I’m looking at shouldn’t exist.”

  “Well, how much do you think she is worth?” Delaney asked.

  “Since there are very few people with even the skill to build this, let alone conceive it, it’s probably a couple million to the right buyer.” Josh picked up her hand, “Jesus! She has a pulse! She’s warm! This is freaking me out!”

  “Well, I’m not selling her,” Delaney stated, convinced that she was his new future. “You said you could reprogram her, right?”

  Josh searched the back of her neck and saw the type of port there. “Yeah, I got a cord that will fit that port and we will see what we can do.” He moved a dining room chair over to his computer. “Hey, Nick,” he said, “put her in the chair.”

  Nick did so, only gently this time.

  Josh plugged the cord into her neck. “With her plugged right in, I will be able to see what her primary programming is. It will take some time, considering the number of programs she has.”

  “Okay,” Delaney said, “She’s all yours; don’t do anything stupid with her, you don’t want DNA evidence bite you in the ass, okay?”

  “Oh, she’s cute, but I understand.”

  To Nick and Larry, Delaney ordered them, “Come on,” and they left.

  ✽✽✽

  At the police station, Morse was in a holding cell. There were four other men in with him, and one of them was simply sitting, minding his own business, one of them was sleeping, another was at the bars obviously drunk and talking nonsense to the cops, and one was leering at Morse.

  “Hey, buddy, what you in here for?” the leering prisoner asked him while maintaining his leer.