Enter the Robocop/Skynet/Blade Runner rip-off chic known as Chloe’s twin sister, Beck.
“Imposter!” I wanted to shout. “Fiend!” I wanted to scream. But instead the only words I found myself saying were, “You’re a lousy kisser.”
“Wow. You really singed my hair with that one,” Beck said with exaggeration.
“Did Piper know that you were a fraud?” I asked, crossing my arms and looking the almost completely synthetic being up and down.
“Who?” She asked, looking puzzled before saying, “Oh, the blonde girl? No, she didn’t know a thing. She’s even more clueless than you are.” Then she saw me examining her.
Smiling, she said, “Chloe tell you about me?”
“Enough,” I answered, walking around her and looking her up and down like a farmer inspecting a tractor. “Tell me, dear, are they mass producing you yet? If so I’ll take four.”
This was meant to be an almost racial jab, really. I mean, I wasn’t sure how comfortable she was with being, you know, a robot with a human brain and spinal column and I wasn’t exactly fond of Beck right off the bat, let me tell you.
“Not yet,” she said nonchalantly with a shrug. “If so we’d have already won this war. But we’re taking donations, Mr. Money Bags.”
Okay. This chic wasn’t backing down. I tried to let her off easy but she wouldn’t take it.
The gloves were off.
“If I’m going to make a contribution can I please make a request for a newer model that doesn’t have a mouth? That would take care of your atrocious kissing and your annoying voice in one shot.”
Letting air hiss through her teeth, Beck grimaced at me like I’d just asked for a soda that she was out of. “Ooh, that might be hard to get past the board, sweetie. Mostly because they’ve discovered, through loads of tests, that only imbeciles are annoyed by my voice. Sorry.”
“Too bad,” I countered with a sigh. “I really could’ve used a few mute, mindless robots around the house.”
“You might try your friend Piper. I bet we could make a few more of her, if you want.”
Whoa, whoa. Way across the line.
“Nah, she wouldn’t work. She’s too good of a kisser,” I said, looking perplexed as I put my hands on my hips. The problem I was having was she looked just like her freakin’ sister so I couldn’t insult her looks. Stupid twin.
“If you’re wanting bad kissing and mindless we could always try and make a few more of you--except surely God wouldn’t allow more than one of your species to run about unchained on the planet.”
I was losing. I knew it. But then I thought of something. Something Chloe has jumped down my throat about an eternity ago…
“If you’re referring to Americans, then I’m guilty as charged,” I said, holding my hands up. “This one time we had a leader that was such an idiot that he got drunk, fired off a nuke and totally screwed up the world…” Then I feigned surprise and said, “Oh wait. That was one of your leaders, wasn’t it? Look at me getting my history all jumbled up. Forgive me, Beck.”
Beck’s smirk almost, almost faltered and her left eye faintly twitched.
Bingo.
“Unfortunate,” Beck said calmly. “If that hadn’t happened then you wouldn’t be losing a battle of wits right now.”
“And you might still be a human being.” I said, matching her same tone. “I guess since you aren’t it’s unfair of me to call you a bad kisser.”
“That’s fine, Jericho,” Beck said in a friendly, forgiving way. Then she lowered her voice to a sort of loud whisper and said, with a hand close to her mouth to feign a clandestine exchange, “I know if I was about to die I’d be a tad cranky, too,” she said, wincing at me.
And that’s when I lost the bout with Beck.
It just occurred to me that since I’m telling this to you I could’ve left this little conversation out of the tale as it doesn’t, uh, you know, progress any of the story…
Curses.
When I didn’t respond fast enough Beck winked at me and patted my shoulder, “It’s ok, Money Bags. I’ll make sure they make what’s left of you into a mindless robot like me,” she said, walking past me, “Maybe even one without a mouth.”
I turned to watch her walk away and saw Chloe standing not twelve feet away. “You’re awake,” She said.
“I think he may have suffered a brain injury, sis. He seems to think he’s a good kisser,” Beck said, passing her sister without any further explanation. I also noticed that Chloe wasn’t exactly exchanging fist bumps so I was thinking that she and Beck weren’t being very sisterly since their reunion. It was also crazy to see them next to each other since they were both wearing the same black jumpsuit. Once she was well away from us Chloe approached me.
“Are you hurting anywhere?” she asked.
“Just my pride,” I muttered, leaning my elbows on the railing. “Your sister is a real charmer. What was she like as a child?”
“Shorter,” Chloe confirmed, leaning her back against the railing beside me and looking freakishly like her sister when she did so. “Not as bitter, though.”
“Getting blown to smithereens will do that to a chic, they tell me,” I said. “She pretended to be you when I woke up. Why was she even there to begin with?”
Chloe shrugged, “Piper and I were beat, Jericho. She must’ve wanted to take a look at you while we were asleep.”
“She kissed me,” I said, not really wanting to accept Chloe’s shrug for some reason. “And rubbed all over my bare chest, confessed her undying love for me and freakin’ licked my chin while pretending to be you and you’re not even the least bit upset about it?” I couldn’t help it. I was a tad upset, what can I say.
Again, Chloe shrugged, “She’s been being me for years, Jericho. I can’t tell her who she can or can’t kiss.” Then she glanced sideways at me. “Although I have to say that I’m a tad jealous she beat me to it,” she said, elbowing my shoulder softly.
“Don’t worry, Chloe,” I told her. “Apparently I’m a bad kisser, anyway, so you aren’t missing anything, it seems.”
It did kind of stink, really, if you think about it. Here I am torn between two awesome girls and the first kiss of the story goes to the evil robo-chic.
Chloe’s smile faltered and she suddenly touched my arm, turning around and leaning on the railing beside me. “Jericho, I know you’ve got too much on your agenda at the moment but you should know that Beck isn’t the way she used to be in more ways than her body. She’s the leader of the Rebels now and she’s also too dangerous.”
I frowned. “How dangerous?”
“Very,” Chloe said. I hadn’t seen her this shook up since she explained to me about her father’s safety ages ago, “They’ve had clinical tests on subjects to try and make something like Beck for a-hundred years or more. The reason it was deemed illegal over twenty years ago was because the subjects all ended up with the same results… or side-effects.”
“Like being extremely obnoxious?” I asked.
“Try the human brain completely rejecting the process of robotics being grafted to the spine,” she said. “Once that was discovered scientists found out that by simply isolating and removing a single brain cell in the left frontal lobe, a secure binding could be achieved.”
“Let me guess--that was the brain cell that made people not be obnoxious.”
Shrugging, Chloe said, “I suppose you could look at it that way. Side-effects aren’t visible right away but over time the cell will try and grow back and sometime during that process the subjects became removed from themselves as well as other’s around them.”
“So they, like, start feeling crazy?”
“They start feeling human again and that causes the conflict. Regardless of how many times the greatest minds of our generation have tried and retried, the end result was always a reclusive, sometimes violent person with a lot of expensive hardware inside of them that ended up being disposed of.”
I looked at her. ??
?Disposed of? Like, killed?”
Nodding, she said, “That’s when they outlawed it.”
“So your sister’s problem is…?”
“She’s still alive,” Chloe said quietly. “Beck is my sister, Jericho. But that doesn’t change the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be like this. No one is. That’s the reason the cell grows back in the first place. The brain knows that the spine is being violated and it tries to purge it.”
This was a lot to take in. “So Beck could snap at any time and start, like, killing people?”
“The cell normally grows back in a few months so she’s already snapped. That and her memory returning were most likely the reasons she ran away again,” Chloe said.
“But Beck is anything but reclusive,” I told her. “If anything she’s the exact opposite. And I can vouch for her knowledge of the English witticism dictionary personally.”
“That’s where I draw a blank,” Chloe said, shaking her head slightly. “All previous tests were done in a controlled lab with simulated scenarios at best so there isn’t any data on how people like Beck would react to the real world.”
“Well, she runs things around here so I guess she’s reacting pretty well.” I stood up straight and stretched. “A group of rebels screaming, shouting and fighting for equality in the world might be just the thing a person who feels non human might need.”
“Maybe.” Chloe said and then we were silent for what seemed like a long time watching the weapon construction below us. Then she asked, “Does Piper think that I kissed you?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“You don’t have to worry about me getting in your way, Jericho. I’ve seen the way you look at her.”
“Appreciate it,” I muttered. “Now if we could only get the D batteries out of your sister’s back I’d be at the top again.”
Chloe laughed at that before getting serious again and saying, “Please don’t say anything like that to Beck. I’m not sure how stable she is so you might want to lay off the synthetic jokes and comments.”
Uh oh.
“So, what’d the two of you talk about?” Chloe asked.
Shrugging, I began walking the direction Piper had gone and she fell in step behind me.
“Nothing.”
Chapter 35