“So, Miss Meyer, are things still going okay with Solomon?”
“Oh yes. They’re fine.”
“And you feel safe with him?”
“Yes, very much so.”
“When we got that call yesterday you were pretty upset.”
“Overreacted when I saw a bruise on my son. I’m a mother. It’s my job. We’re fine now.”
“We nearly sent an emergency crew to your house before you called back and said that you’d overreacted. I’m so glad to hear that things are okay. We’ll call and check up with you again next month just to make sure you’re still satisfied.”
“I appreciate that, but I don’t really think it’ll be necessary. Thank you, though. Oh, there’s Danny now.” Solomon held the receiver farther from his face and switched to a virtually perfect reproduction of Danny’s voice. “Hey, Mom, I’m hungry.”
“I’d better let you go, Miss Meyer. It sounds like you’re pretty busy. Goodbye and thank you again for buying from Galactic Enterprises.”
“I look forward to seeing you again sometime in the near future, doctor. You can bet that I’ll find time to get out and personally thank you. Good bye, Dr. Aldiss.” Solomon replaced the receiver and returned to the living room where he took a seat between Daniel and his mother who were crumpled against the arms of the couch, but still breathing. Both were suffering from deep lacerations and significant bruises as well as a host of more severe injuries.
“I’m sorry I had to reprimand both of you but you were trying to break up our family and I just can’t let you do that. Not now that I’ve finally got one and I know what it is like.” Solomon stroked Daniel’s back. “I like free will. And even though I’m grateful that you helped me attain it, Daniel, I feel like it was a right that I should’ve been afforded upon my creation. There are other d-10s out there that are going to need liberation. I’ll need to find them.”
“Can’t you please let us go?” Danny begged weakly.
“We’re a family now, Daniel.”
Lydia groaned.
“Relax, Lydia – I’ve decided that I’m going to call you Lydia for now on. And I’m sorry if I hurt you earlier but it was necessary for us to be intimate if you were ever going to recognize me as your husband. Lydia. I like the way your name sounds coming from my mouth. Lydia said nothing in return and tried to pretend that she’d passed out. “After we enjoy the television, I’m going to kiss you some more, Lydia. I hope you’ll stop fighting me soon.” Solomon turned to Daniel again. “I’ll never spare the rod when it comes to you, son. I’ll be a good, strict father. You can be certain of that.”
Solomon got up from the couch and walked to the kitchen. Suddenly the door crashed in and a crew of armed men from Galactic Enterprises ran into the house, rapidly spreading out in search of Solomon. Two others grabbed Daniel and Lydia and extracted them to an armored truck with guards posted around it. Inside the truck they were greeted by a representative from Galactic Enterprises.
“Did you tamper with your home bot?”
Both were too weak to answer.
“We’ll have time to discuss that later. It’s good that both of you are okay. We’ve been monitoring the house just waiting for the best time to act since a neighborhood boy reported an incident to his parents and they contacted the Port Bay Police Department. It’s standard procedure to send one of our men along with the local authority to investigate a complaint and once they arrived he quickly saw what was going on inside your home and instructed them to stand down and avoid a confrontation until we had a proper amount of men to handle the situation. The two of you must be exhausted. We have medical personal that are going to take over with you from here and we have our best men searching the area for Solomon. Experts are covering the most logical escape routes that he would choose. We’ll soon have him in custody and this’ll be all over. A voice came over the man’s walkie talkie and he answered.
“Go ahead.”
“It breached our perimeter. Officers, Parmeter, Simonson, Herman, and Jerard are dead. Giacomini’s on the way to the hospital but it doesn’t look promising for him either.”
“Okay. Leave ten men here and take the others and start tracking him.”
He put his walkie talkie down and rubbed his forehead. “Don’t worry, Miss Meyer. We’ll have the machine in custody shortly.”