The basement lecture hall at Gale City College had seen better days. Dust covered every surface, and the air was thick with the musty smell of neglect. But it served their covert purpose. Laz and Patricia huddled over a table strewn with stolen schematics of the FOG Academy, their heads close together as they pored over the details. Bud lay in a corner, eyes never leaving the pair.
“Look here,” Laz said, pointing to a blank area on the map. “This could be where they’re hiding the prison.” Patricia nodded, her metallic fingers tracing the outline of the empty space, the black orbs of her optical sensors scanning back and forth. Bud had already uploaded the schematics to his memory banks and reached a similar conclusion, but neither Laz nor Patricia had shown any interest in his opinions, so he’d kept the analysis to himself.
“I concur. It’s the best lead we have so far. AMEN lifted these plans from the city planning office, so it’s no surprise that they’re incomplete. FOG conducts all manner of covert operations from within the Academy.”
Bud huffed. Patricia might be putting on a show of transparency, but clearly she had access to resources far beyond what she was letting on. The space elevator, for one – located at the very top of FOG headquarters. It was the only way to reach the planetary surface from Phobos. Ships almost never left surface—where would they go? And she had a hadron. Those were expensive even for the FOG. So why did she need Laz to sneak into the Academy? Sure, an android would have difficulty getting past FOG security, but the same could be said for him and Laz. They were relying on heat shields to mask their cybernetic components.
Clearly, Patricia was transferring the rescue effort’s risk from the rebellion to a couple of outsiders. That left a taste in Bud’s mouth worse than the budget food Laz fed him. But that couldn’t be all. Patricia had some smarts in her neural pathways. She had to see the potential liability Laz’s instability posed. So why insist on him?
Laz’s voice pulled Bud from his reverie. "What about this area here?"
"That's the instructors' wing," Patricia said, gesturing to the part of the schematic Laz had indicated. "You'll be assigned quarters there, along with an office." She went on to detail other key locations – the classroom where Laz would teach, the cadets' wing, the mess hall. Laz perked up noticeably when she mentioned the instructors' lounge.
“A bar, you say?”
Patricia's lips twitched in what might have been amusement. "Focus, Lazarus. We're not doing this for a few free drinks."
Laz chuckled. Bud fumed, but they both ignored him, and he rolled onto one side, staring at the stained ceiling through a half-open eyelid.
As the night wore on, they covered everything from the Academy grading system to field exercises undertaken by the more advanced cadets. Apparently there was a whole cysniffer training program, so Bud’s presence wouldn’t be out of place. Ordinarily, he’d have found it offensive to be compared to one of those machines, but given the circumstances and a few tweaks to his motor subroutines, it would give him an ideal cover.
Bud dozed for a while, but stirred when he realized they were no longer discussing the infiltration. Patricia was in the midst of describing her activation during the early days of Mars colonization, of the wonder and fear she'd felt as she became self-aware. It was so strange to hear a robot speak of emotion, particularly in Patricia’s largely inflectionless tone. An uncomfortable (at least for Bud) silence followed when she’d finished, only to be filled a few moments later by Laz.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I single-handedly reprogrammed an entire battalion of security drones?" he asked, his eyes twinkling. "With nothing but a paperclip and a bottle of simple syrup?"
Bud put a paw over his snout, but Patricia leaned in closer. "Tell me more."
Laz launched into another story, this one about the android housekeeper he and his wife had owned before the Purge. "She was practically part of the family," he said, his voice taking on a wistful tone. "We appreciated her so much – all the little things she did to make our lives easier."
Bud couldn't help but huff at that. He remembered things differently. Sure, Laz had never been cruel to the housekeeper, but he'd never shown any particular regard for it either. It had been Laz's wife who had truly cared for the android, treating it with kindness and respect. Bud tried to recall specific interactions, to bring the memories into sharper focus, but they remained frustratingly blurry. The damage from uploading Laz's neural net into his own memory banks had left gaps, shadows where clear recollections should have been. He shook his head, trying to clear it. What was Patricia's angle here? Why was she so intent on ingratiating herself with Laz?
Meanwhile, Patricia and Laz continued their conversation, their voices a low murmur in the dimly lit room. She spoke with reverence about AMEN's leader, another cyborg like Lazarus. "She was one of the first to stand against the FOG." The yellow halogen glow of the overhead lights caused her otherwise dead eyes to shine. "She rescued me from a garbage disposal facility shortly after the Purge. Snuck me aboard a shipping container on the space elevator to Phobos."
Patricia's voice softened further. "She actually used her own neural net to reboot mine. It was a big risk she took for me. I'll be forever grateful."
Laz nodded, his expression unreadable. Then, without warning, he blurted out, "Did you know Phobos has an orbital period of 7 hours, 39 minutes, and 12 seconds?"
Patricia laughed. The sound was like marbles jangling around in an empty keg, and it startled Bud so much that he jolted off his bed. Patricia aimed a frown in his direction before reaching for a tablet on the table at the same moment Laz did. Their hands touched, and for a brief moment, they both froze. Bud watched as Patricia quickly retracted her hand, a flicker of something–embarrassment? confusion?–crossing her face.
"How about that drink now?" Laz asked. Patricia shook her head, but she laughed again.
Bud's ears perked up, his internal sensors picking up on his owner's elevated heart rate and neural activity. It was eerily similar to the reaction he'd had with the dark-haired woman at the Carnival. This wasn't Laz's usual excitement when chasing women in bars. This seemed... real.
Not good. Laz didn't need anything else clouding his judgment. And how could he develop feelings for someone else when he still showed no emotion about what had happened to his wife and Moose?
Patricia abruptly said, "Let's review the class you'll be teaching." She pulled out another tablet. "It's an introductory human biology course. Your first lecture will cover the human brain."
Laz leaned in, his earlier distraction apparently forgotten as he immersed himself in the lesson plans. Bud watched, a growl building in his throat. He needed to talk to Laz alone, to understand what was happening. But with Patricia here, that conversation would have to wait.
“Actually,” Laz said, “the hippocampus is composed of three primary regions. There’s the…”
It was going to be a long, uneasy night.
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Note: I wrote this story with the assistance of AI. To read about my process, see the following post:
buymeacoffee.com/dtkane/mars-174-years-after-earth-destruction.