The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense (18 page)

“Let’s try it tomorrow. I’m
going to be late for picking up my cousin from daycare.”

Dr. Miles began taking the
vest off of the mannequin. Trista picked up her bag and
left.

“No one’s ever made an
electrical vest before, Dad,” Mandelie said. “Do you think people
might be a little scared of wearing it?”

Dr. Miles looked
confused.

“Why would they be scared?
It’s only a garment that produces a rotating cycle of a thousand
volts of electricity, contained by a tear-proof material. It’s like
wearing a T-shirt!”

Mandelie smiled.

“So, um, Brigite, you hold
the club like this,” Jake said. He demonstrated with a golf club as
he and Brigite stood on a plastic green turf with a giant doll’s
head at one end of it.

Brigite chewed her gum. She
wore a bright yellow bikini top and microscopic denim shorts, an
outfit which caused most of the other patrons at Mr. Wackey’s Fun
Time Golf to stare at her, either in shock or delight.

Jake hit the golf ball,
which rolled slowly over the plastic grass until it sank into the
doll’s mouth. He pumped his fist in the air.

“Yes! Now, your
turn.”

Brigite took the golf club
from him and prepared to hit the ball.

“No, no,” Jake said,
standing behind her. “You need to hold it like this.”

He put his hands on her arms
and adjusted her stance.

“Like this?” Brigite said,
purposely leaning into him.

Jake stepped away from her
as hastily as if she had given him an electric shock. He pointed
wildly at nothing in particular.

“Oh, man, look at that! It’s
a … it’s a giant clown on a spaceship! Let’s go try that one
out.”

Brigite sighed.

Chapter 4.

In slightly more physical
comfort after his intense physical therapy session and a long
shower, Damian sat in his wheelchair in a red silk bathrobe,
digging into a plate of blueberry dinner pancakes. Carlie sat in a
chair next to him, staring at her iPad.

“You need to read this news
alert, Damian,” Carlie said. “I’m sending it to you
now.”

Damian paused in the middle
of eating pancakes and looked down at his touchscreen.

“Frontier Corp. announces
plans to build androids. Frontier Corp? Madrick Castleshank? I
thought they were just in the artificial leg racket. I know
Madrick’s made himself rich off of millions of limbless
people.”

“Looks like they want to
move in on Adventis,” Carlie said.

“That potbellied hick,”
Damian said. “I should have expected this. The vultures are
circling. A paralyzed CEO isn’t exactly a beacon of confidence for
shareholders. When’s the next Adventis board meeting,
Carlie?”

“It’s tomorrow, at the Four
Seasons, at eight,” Carlie said. “But you haven’t been to a board
meeting in months. They’re not expecting you.”

“Send out one of your
glorious memos,” Damian said. “Not expecting me. I’m the mind and
the face of Adventis. Who else do they expect? Santa
Claus?”

Jake and Brigite sat in an
ice cream parlor inside the miniature golf park, sharing a banana
split.

“You’re doing great,
Brigite,” Jake said. “We’re really close to winning that giant
stuffed alligator you saw on the way in.”

Brigite spooned ice
cream.

“Jake, why don’t you like
me?”

Jake choked on his mouthful
of ice cream.

“Um … of course I like you,
Brigite. What makes you think I don’t?”

Brigite played with her
spoon.

“Well, you never let me set
up my pole in your living room. You don’t let me give you any lap
dances. And when I tried to take you shopping at the Naughty Toy
Emporium, you ran out the door after five minutes.”

“So you think I don’t like
you?” Jake said. “I really, really like you Brigite. I just don’t
want to be like all the other guys you’ve had to entertain. You
know. The ones who just treat you like a robot stripper. I want to
be different from them.”

“You are different, Jake,”
Brigite said. “You’re not like them. Trust me. You don’t have to be
worried about making me feel uncomfortable. Whatever you want from
me, just ask. I want to make all your fantasies come
true.”

Jake was
speechless.

“It’s getting harder and
harder for me to feel okay about you sleeping in the lab,” Mandelie
said. She and Luke were alone in the lab, after both Dr. Miles and
Trista had left.

Luke smiled.

“Why is that hard for you?
I’m an android. I don’t need a house.”

“So you’re fine with
sleeping on a cot in the back room of the lab?” Mandelie
said.

“I’m fine with it,” Luke
said. “Your father installed a shower in the restroom of the
laboratory. I’ve got all my needs met.”

“Okay. I thought I heard
Brigite saying she was tired of sleeping in the laboratory, so I
wanted to see how you felt about it,” Mandelie said. “But Jake was
around when she said it, so maybe she was just trying to prod him
into … something sexual.”

“Brigite’s never said
anything to me,” Luke said.

“Well, just tell me if you
get sick of it,” Mandelie said. “You can always stay with
me.”

“Of course,” Luke said.
“Thank you.”

Mandelie kissed him and then
she left the lab.

Chapter 5.

Mealtimes at the Castleshank
manor in upstate New York were never a joyous affair. Rochelle
Castleshank, Madrick’s wife, was two decades younger than he was,
his former secretary, and beginning to realize what a mistake she
had made when she had accepted Madrick’s drunken proposal during a
company retreat in Las Vegas.

She sat across a long
shining oak table from Madrick in the expensively decorated dining
room of their Georgian style mansion, listlessly toying with her
food and drinking copious amounts of red wine. Madrick did not even
seem to notice she was there. He was having a conversation on his
phone, in between harassing their butler.

“I want the best tech
engineers there are, Dale, the best in the country. James, I told
you, I want the steak bloody! If you bring me one more charred
ribeye, I swear I’ll drop it down the front of your pants. What did
you say, Dale? Yeah, I want the very best engineers, ones with big
ole’ grand ideas for some groundbreaking androids. I want to give
the world a heart attack, Dale. James, get me another tequila, when
you’re done topping off her glass. Yeah, yeah, I know you’ll do
your best. Let me know when you’ve got ‘em.”

“Let’s go see a show on
Broadway, Madrick,” Rochelle said, when Madrick had hung up.
“You’ve been promising me for weeks.”

“I never promised to take
you to any show on Broadway,” Madrick said. “You’ve been drinking
too much. Just turn on the television and watch a soap opera or
something.”

Luke was lying on his cot in
a back room of the laboratory when he heard the front door open and
Brigite enter loudly on her platform heeled sneakers. He stretched
out and placed his arms behind his head, listening as she walked
noisily down the hallway and then came into their shared
room.

His vision adjusted for the
darkness automatically and he saw her shadowy form lean down, take
off her heels, and then fling them carelessly near her cot, where
they joined the mess of clutter on her side of the room. Though she
had a wheeled clothing rack Luke had procured for her as well as
for himself from a department store, she never used it. Her
inexhaustible collection of skimpy clothing and lingerie was tossed
all around instead, mingling with her dozens of stuffed animals and
scented candles that she was constantly burning and forgetting.
Luke was endlessly finding them and extinguishing them before the
laboratory was burned to the ground.

His side of the room was
militarily clean and ordered, his clothes hung up in straight rows
on the rack, his toiletries stacked in a clear box beside his bed.
The room was sliced in half without any line needed to be drawn
down the middle of it, between chaos and cleanliness.

“How did you enjoy miniature
golf?” Luke said, as Brigite took off her bikini and shorts, and
donned her favorite sheer negligee.

“You lied,” Brigite said.
“Miniature golf is not at all thrilling.”

Luke smiled.

Brigite fluffed her blue
hair before she crawled into her own cot.

“But at least I finally told
Jake how I much I wished he would just let me give him a lap dance
already. I can’t believe I sat through four movies, twelve hours of
Grand Theft Auto, and three hours of miniature golf before I put my
foot down.”

“Humans often need to be
coaxed into what’s best for them,” Luke said.

“Tell me about it,” Brigite
said, pulling her silk blanket up to her chin and her cucumber mask
over her eyes.

Mandelie let herself through
the door of her modest one-bedroom apartment in Malibu, not
expecting to see anyone in her living room. She narrowed her eyes
when she saw the television was turned on.

A dreadlocked head peered up
over her couch at her. Jake yawned, rubbing sleep from his
eyes.

“Jake, what are you doing
here?” Mandelie said.

“Sorry,” Jake said, looking
chagrined. “Your place was on the way back from the mini-golf place
and I needed a place to chill in peace and quiet, without my four
roommates all trying to talk to me at once. I guess I must have
fallen asleep.”

“How did you get
in?”

“I still have a copy of your
key from the time you needed me to water your plants,” Jake
said.

“Which you drowned, by the
way,” Mandelie said. She put her bag down on her kitchen table and
joined him on the couch.

“How was the golf date with
Brigite?”

“Oh, um, it was okay,” Jake
said, turning red. “Well, not the golf part, she hated that part.
But she did come right out and tell me she wanted to make all my
fantasies come true.”

Mandelie laughed.

“She’s just so much to
handle all at the same time,” Jake said. “I mean, it’s like I’m
faced with my dream girl, and I’m the loser that can’t figure out
what to say to her. I’ve never been like this with any girl
before.”

“You’re not a loser, Jake,”
Mandelie said. “You’re just trying to be a good guy. Because you
are a good guy, and she gets that. Don’t worry about it so much.
Just be yourself, and let Brigite be herself.”

“Thanks,” Jake said. “I’ll
take your word for it. I mean, your thing with Luke is going pretty
good. Can I crash here tonight? I’m way tired.”

“Sure,” Mandelie said. “As
long as you make pancakes in the morning.”

“Right on.”

Chapter 6.

Luke’s internal alarm went
off at eight the next morning. He quietly got out of his cot.
Brigite awoke from her sleep state a half hour after he did, in
order to give Luke time in the shower first.

He showered quickly, in
efficient time as he usually did, in the bathroom that had been
added to the laboratory just for the androids. He put on a loose
shirt, jeans, and running shoes. As he emerged from the bathroom
Brigite marched past him, her blue hair somewhat rumpled, holding
her towel and her vanilla scented body soap. Luke neatly pulled a
candle out of her arm.

“One of these days you’re
going to set yourself on fire. Yourself or the lab,” he
said.

“That’s Honey Mist,” Brigite
said. “I like the bathroom to smell good while I’m taking a shower
in it.”

“You have got twenty two
different varieties of scented soap,” Luke said. “One missing
candle isn’t going to make a difference.”

He walked down the hallway
of the lab and nearly ran into Trista, who looked decidedly
grouchier than she usually did.

“Hello, Trista,” Luke
said.

“Hey, Luke,” Trista said.
She exhaled and began turning on lights in all of the rooms in the
hallway.

“What’s wrong?” Luke
said.

“I’m counting the days until
my relatives get out of town,” Trista said. “My cousin is a
five-year-old demon. And apparently I’m supposed to be his
babysitter, while my aunts and uncles go to Disneyland three times
in a row.”

She shook her head and began
pouring herself a cup of coffee in the laboratory break
room.

“Do you mind getting the
electrical vest out and setting it on the mannequin, Luke? And also
booting up the Mind Portal machine?”

“Not at all,” Luke
said.

The black shining limousine
pulled up in front of the Four Seasons hotel. Carlie got out of the
passenger seat and immediately walked to the trunk of the car. She
removed Damian’s wheelchair from it and placed it in front of the
car.

The chauffeur opened the
passenger door of the car and a set of titanium crutches appeared.
Damian dragged himself out, leaning on the crutches. He wore a
white shirt, shining blue tie, and dark trousers.