The Creation of Amy Read online

  With a twinkle of youthful joy in his eyes, Ford excused himself and returned to work.

  Phillips, Morse, and Amy now went to the exercise facility. Amy benched-pressed six-times her body weight, which was about a hundred pounds. Her squat-thrust was nearly a thousand. The tough rubber muscles created massive force, but rapidly drained her battery.

  She blurted out, “My battery is at thirty-percent and failing, Father.”

  Phillips quipped, “Oops, time to get Cinderella home before she turns into a pumpkin!”

  The trio walked out to the parking lot, got in the Charger, and drove back to the lab.

  Chapter Nine

  Meanwhile, in a shadier part of town, a man entered a local strip club. His name was Vincent Delaney, a low-level boss of a drug ring in Brooklyn. He walked into the back of the strip club, which was hopping and exploding dance music. Like something out of a Sopranos episode, Vincent, 45 years old half Sicilian half Irish, he walked into the back office and shut the door where a number of men were playing poker in gray air from the many smokers.

  A man called his name, the man was Cipriano, a heavy hitting, mid-range mobster. He was an imposing figure with balding silvery hair and Delaney’s boss.

  Cipriano got up, hugged Delaney, and asked, “How you been?” as he had his hands on Delaney’s face.

  “Good, boss,” Delaney said, “things are going good.”

  Delaney pulled out an envelope from the left inside pocket of his suit jacket. He passed it to Cipriano, who immediately opened it, and seemed annoyed with the amount of money that was in it.

  “Things are going good, huh,” scoffed the mobster, “I heard different, and my taste is not what it should be,” he finished with a tilted smirk. “I hear Coronado has taken more of your territory, sounds like you’re screwing up there. I give you this opportunity because I believe it’s my duty, since your father saved my father, but maybe you’re not cut out for this.”

  “No, Mister Cipriano, I can handle this. It’s just this character, Coronado, has got some major manpower, a number of foot-soldiers, and he’s been making some moves lately.”

  “Yeah,” Cipriano said, “but, you’re not handling it right, your situation better change soon, or I’ll have someone else take over the operation.”

  “I will, sir,” Delaney promised. “I’ll take care of Coronado.”

  “Good, good. Next time I see you, things will be different, right?”

  “Absolutely, sir,” Delany assured with a nod.

  Cipriano smiled again, “Good to see you again. Give my regards to your father.”

  Cipriano walked out of the office.

  Delaney was aggravated, he did not have a plan to stop Coronado continuing to take over, and he saw no way out. He went over to the poker table, everyone greeted him, and some got up and hugged him, and kissed as mobsters often do in the movies.

  One of the crew asked Delaney to play a hand, so he joined the game. The group talked about various people, scores, and schemes, they also talked about FBI agents that tail some of them. Then one man, named Larry, started talking about a man working on a weird experiment.

  Larry was a delivery driver, one of many that brought parts and equipment to Morse’s building. They started going back and forth about it, then one man, named Nick, claimed that this man’s experiment was actually a robot. Everyone there laughed at him, but Nick went on to say that he heard that this scientist succeeded in creating a robot girl, and that his source was Marcus, from the talent agency. Another man then claimed to know who this mysterious inventor was. His name was Rodger Evans, the same man that murdered Morse’s wife.

  Then someone argued, “Who gives a shit? It’s all bull anyway, I’m sure.”

  Everyone laughed, except Delaney.

  After the game, most of the men left, but Delaney stopped Evans and asked, “Who is this guy that made the robot?”

  Evans seemed to be in discomfort, “Oh, nobody important, just some government scientist, it was all just bull anyway.”

  Evans began to walk out; Delaney grabbed him, picking him up by his shirt collar, “Bullshit? I’m getting some from you, right now! What do you know?”

  “Whoa, buddy! It’s cool. I’ll tell you,” he proceeded to tell Delaney all about Morse, his wife, and the role he had in her death, and that he kept tabs on Morse from time to time, mainly because he felt guilty about the fire, and his wife’s death.

  “That woman never did anything to me, and I was strung out on drugs. It’s messing with me, man. I would ‘a been screwed if I didn’t get involved with you guys.”

  Delaney mused a moment.

  “So, it’s probably true, he may have made a girl robot.

  “You and me are gonna get some more info. So, here’s the deal, have Nick and Larry watch the doc’s building, see what we find, got it?”

  “Sounds good to me,” Evans nodded, “I’ll get it done.”

  Chapter Ten

  The next day at Morse’s building, both Phillips and Morse were working on their creations. Morse was still carving out the metal skeleton of Stephanie, and Phillips was cleaning up Amy’s programing. Morse had already called Kara earlier, and they were to meet at the government research facility’s gym later that day.

  Phillips had Amy’s WI-FI connection to the internet established, and had created a program where Amy, whatever she had a question about, could simply google whenever she wanted.

  Phillips had also created pass codes to make sure no one could hack her from the outside. He next decided to write an entire program called, self-defense, and began teaching her what times were appropriate to fight and which times were not.

  The time arrived to leave, so Morse told Amy to get in the back seat, and Phillips, Morse, with Amy all headed to the government lab’s gym in the Charger. As they left, Nick and Larry spied on them, parked in a black Lincoln Continental from a discrete distance.

  Nick called Delaney, “Hey, there are two guys and a chick in Morse’s black Charger, and they’re taking off.”

  “Follow them.”

  Nick and Larry drove behind them to the lab.

  The Charger, with Morse driving, Phillips in the passenger seat, along with Amy in the back, arrived at the government building. They got clearance at the gates and parked in the parking garage.

  Nick, driving the Continental, saw the gates and Larry said, “Park away from the gates, we will wait for them right here, on the side of the road.”

  They pulled, parked with a column of other parked cars, and waited.

  Morse, Phillips, and Amy emerged into the gym through its double doors.

  A few minutes later, a small, silver Honda drove by the Continental. She cleared the gates of the lab. It was Kara, and she parked and went into the building and found the scientists. Amy was already running around, and not as badly as she was before.

  Kara walked up to Morse.

  “Hey,” she said, “What do you need today, doc?”

  “All you have to do is run and have Amy watch you run. As you can see, she needs some work.”

  Kara nodded, walked up to Amy, “Hey, Amy,” she said with a hug.

  “Hello,” she said, hugging her back.

  Morse said to Kara, “Run when you’re ready. Slow at first, and then run as fast as you can. Amy will follow.”

  “Okay, here I go.”

  Kara ran with Amy running behind her.

  Phillips said, “This is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen!”

  “Amy is improving already,” Morse noticed.

  Two hours of running and Kara was slumped and sweaty.

  She walked over to Phillips and Morse, announcing between pants, “I’m…. done….”

  She was dripping and breathing heavily.

  “I think we got everything,” Morse said to her. “Amy has mimicked your running style. I was hoping that you didn’t naturally run like a duck!”

  Kara smirked sardonically.

  “HA, HA,”
she said.

  Morse continued, “Okay, Kara, get ready to see what Amy can do.”

  He turned, speaking now to Amy, who was standing in the middle of the gym, “Jump twenty-feet into the air.”

  “Twenty feet,” Kara seemed incredulous.

  “Yes. Watch,” Morse urged.

  Amy, like before, crouched down, her right hand on the floor, and sprung straight up; somehow more gracefully than before. Nearly touching the ceiling of the gym before she descended, she landed with a thud, and stood back up.

  “Wow!” Kara said, leaving her mouth open.

  Morse said to Phillips, “Take it from here, Uncle.”

  Phillips said to Amy, “Walk to the end of the gym,” and as he pointed to the right end, said, “Then run as fast as you can to the other, giving yourself time to decelerate, got it?”

  “Yes, Uncle,” she said.

  She walked to the right end of the gym.

  Morse had brought a laptop with him that was able to track Amy’s location and speed with a GPS and had set it up on the bleachers, so he put it on his lap to watch it while watching Amy.

  She ran from one end of the gym to the other, twice as fast as Kara could.

  Phillips and Morse nodded approval.

  Phillips told Amy to run and jump as far as she could in the confines of the gym. Amy ran, got one-quarter of the way through the gym, then jumped almost as high as before, but cleared another quarter of the gym before landing, and doing a controlled roll before springing back to her feet, ten feet from the other end of the building.

  Kara gave out a short scream and covered her mouth.

  After seeing the computer results of the exercise, Morse declared, “She can go farther.”

  “That was beautiful,” Phillips said.

  “How can she jump so damn far?” Kara wanted to know.

  She seemed enthralled in Amy’s inhuman abilities with her own-copied body.

  Morse explained, “The synthetic muscle generates more power than actual muscle, and since she has a titanium skeleton, she can withstand tremendous forces.”

  Phillips asked Morse, “How much battery power left?”

  “89 percent,” Morse reported. “We improved her running gait, which improved her efficiency; her muscles are not fighting each other anymore. Also, the fall caused no damage at all.”

  “You guys are so good at this! It’s impressive, but, I have to go, though.”

  Morse walked over to Kara.

  “Thank you for helping again,” he said to her with a warm smile.

  “No problem,” Kara replied. “Take care of my girl!”

  Kara then left for her car.

  Adhering to the task, Phillips said, “We have to get how much power she has in a punch, let’s take her to the machine in the weight area.”

  The day continued on, and Amy was tested and tested, and was exceeding the two scientists’ expectations that day.

  ✽✽✽

  All the while that the colleagues were testing Amy, Nick and Larry were still waiting for Amy and the scientists to come back out. They saw the same silver Honda drive out, and they noticed that she looked just like the girl that came with Morse and Phillips in the Charger earlier. The two men were puzzled. They reported to Delaney.

  Nick said through the phone, “Hey, I think we’re definitely on to something here, it seems there are two identical broads, one we followed with the two scientists, and one showed up later on. She stayed for a while; now she left. I’m assuming that the chick that just left is real and the one with Morse is the android.”

  “Good,” Delaney said. “I’m on my way to see an old friend that owes me big. Keep watching them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Nick affirmed, pressing End on his Droid.

  On the other side of town, Delany had arrived at an apartment, and knocked on the door. After a pause, the sound of locks unlocking came through the door. The door finally opened. The man in the apartment was Josh Spectra, a computer hacker that worked at times with Cipriano’s crew to do certain nefarious technological tasks for them for a fee.

  “Mister Delaney, this is a surprise.”

  Delaney pushed through without waiting for an invite.

  “Josh, I have an interesting opportunity for you, a way to pay me back for not letting you rot in prison for five years.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” answered Josh, welcoming him in a sardonic fashion with an after-the-fact arm gesture, “you want me around to do you favors.”

  “Shut up,” Delaney snapped. “You ever heard of Robert Morse?”

  “No, I have not. Should I know him?”

  Josh waited to be impressed, now with his arms crossed under his chest in a wide stance.

  “Well, I have good reason to believe this guy’s built an android.” Delaney said in his own dramatic stance.

  Josh laughed almost hysterically, “Right! Sure! I think you have been doing too much of your products, there.”

  “Look this is real. I didn’t believe it myself, but this guy is a Cyberneticist; he quit working for the government and has been working on this android for a couple of years now.”

  “Listen,” said Josh, “we don’t have the technology to build an android; trust me, if there were any, I’d know about it.”

  “Listen, jack-off, you’re going to help me get this android. I need this.”

  “Yeah, I heard you’re not cutting it with Cipriano; maybe a career change would work for you?”

  Josh had long, ratty blonde-brown hair, thick glasses, and completed his look with a ratty beard. His apartment was filthy, and the computer he had was the central theme of the place.

  “Tomorrow we’re going to do some re-con, and I want you to bring a laptop and find out everything about Morse and his new million-dollar toy.”

  “Where are we going tomorrow?”

  “To a diner down the road from Morse’s house,” Delany informed him. “He brings the android there every day so far.”

  “What’s the android look like?”

  “Like a young girl, about 20, brown hair.”

  “Well, if you’re convinced this is for real; I’ll go along with it.”

  ✽✽✽

  Later that night, back at the lab, Amy was sitting in her chair recharging, and Phillips was doing more programing, while Morse was stringing Stephanie’s titanium bones together.

  Phillips, marveling at the skeleton forming, said, “This is something! So, this skeleton is identical to Adriana’s?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “‘Ain’t that something? So, when do you think you’ll have her body complete?”

  “Well, I’m going twice as fast as with Amy, so in a couple of months, maybe?”

  “Well, good, I should be done with Amy’s main programs soon. Then, I’ll begin adaptation programs. I’ll get her to play the guitar and maybe sing.”

  Morse nodded, “Nice.”

  “I notice you gave Amy a WI-FI connection, and you started a program to make it so she could go on the internet and find answers to questions. Not a bad idea, but when I finish with the program you started, I’ll add a number of pass-codes and a firewall, maybe set up an alert if some kind of unusual activity is detected by her CPU. I’ll also finish up your program that decides which memories to store and which to delete.”

  Morse sighed one of relief, “That’s good. That was aggravating me.”

  The next morning, the day stared as it had for the last few days: Phillips came to the lab, and Morse, Phillips, and Amy went to the diner. They all sat down at their usual table and ordered breakfast, except Amy.

  On this day though, in the back of the diner there were four men sitting at a booth, Delaney, Spectra, Nick, and Larry. They appeared to be relaxed, and Spectra had his hopped-up laptop on the table with his fingers on the keys.

  Delaney with a hushed voice said to Spectra, “See? That’s the girl, see her?”

  “I see her,” Spectra answered. “So, far, I don’t see anything t
hat would make me believe she’s some kind of machine. But, I’ll try some things on my laptop here.”

  Larry asked, “Why don’t one of us go over and try to say hi to the girl; ask her, her name, you know?”

  Nick scoffed, “What are you, crazy? We don’t want them guys knowing our faces.”

  Delaney flopped his up-turned palm on the tabletop, outreaching with it a bit, “If the two guys get up and leave her alone, I’ll have Nick go up, and ask her name. Might help to have some info here,” he said, tapping the surface of the table now.

  Spectra changed the subject, “I snooped into the diner’s router to see all the users connected right now to their WI-FI, and there are several WI-FI connections. Three are computers. The three that are on are: mine, the diner’s, obviously, because it says ‘Diner Computer,’ and an ‘Amy 1’.”

  Spectra looked as though he were deep in thought. “If I was to construct an android,” he said, “the brain would basically be a computer, and I might have it able to connect to the internet for answering questions. And, if she is connected to the internet, I can hack into her brain. I’m sure it would take time, because anyone who has the brains to construct a hot little android, and be able to program her so well that she acts fairly human, they will certainly have her pass-code protected with a badass firewall; anti-virus and malware protection to boot.”

  After a few minutes, Phillips headed to the bathroom, and Morse went to talk with the diner’s owner. Delany told Nick, “Go, now!”

  Nick slid from his seat and approached Amy, watching her for a moment. Amy ignored him, unmoving apart from a few blinks. Nick said, “Hi, what’s your name?”

  Amy turned and looked at Nick, and said, “Amy. What is your name?”

  “John,” Nick lied. “Nice to meet you,” and Nick held out his hand; Amy gingerly shook it. Nick went on, “You’re very beautiful, Amy; just wanted to say that. Enjoy your day.”

  “Thank you. Enjoy your day as well.” Amy responded properly.

  Nick returned to their table.

  Delaney, with his elbows on the table, hands close to his chest, he drummed his fingertips, and asked before Nick could even sit, “So? What’s her name?”