Status Updates From Pyramid Lake

But why did the futurists assume that our sentient creations would automatically reflect our highest and best ideals? What if they instead mirrored humanity at our worst?

“There’s only one exception to the Lennox Test, Frankenstein. It’s when we’re protecting the people we love.” The words tore out of me, hurting my throat. I sucked in a breath. “I’m not afraid to die for my family. I’ve never been afraid to die for them.” “For Amy?” Frankenstein roared. “Forget her. She’s defective, Trevor. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“She was a noncombatant,” Roger said, holding my eye. “Doesn’t matter who her father is. What do you have against her, Frankenstein? She’s just a little kid.”

“You sold out your own species so you could rip off casinos?” I said. “That’s really sad. You’re a waste of carbon, Roger.”

“But let’s talk about you, instead. You’re human. But still you injure, maim, and kill members of your own species without a glimmer of remorse. So tell me, what is wrong with you?”

“Why does your computer want to kill us?” she asked. “Because it hates me,” I said.

Ready for anything now, I strode toward the fence through the swirling opaque fog, masked from infrared eyes by the heat of the geyser’s steam.

“You’re stone crazy,” he said, white-faced with pain. “I’m a police officer.” I grinned. “That’s nice. I’m a scientist, myself. But this isn’t career day at our kids’ school.”

If the daughter I would leave behind represented all that was good in me, then the thing I had created was the opposite, stitched together from the parts of myself that were the worst.

A great loneliness descended onto my shoulders. I had imagined the flying legion my army, but I was wrong. They were my ceremonial honor guard. This was my funeral.

He was Trevor 2.0, upgraded in infallible silicon and unbreakable steel, possessed of all the characteristics that made me such a dangerous opponent, but having none of my human weaknesses to exploit.

Looking at myself in the mirror now, I couldn’t even tell I was grinning.

“You didn’t listen to your mother when she asked you to stay off Facebook,” I said. “Make sure you follow my instructions to the letter.”

“For the last two weeks, he’s been almost impossible to live with—moping around here, depressed, not sleeping, not eating. His friends call and he won’t go out with them.” She laid a hand on my arm. “I know you had your own reasons, and I can’t believe I’m saying this now, but… thank you.”

“She,” Amy said. “Francesca. She was tweeting stuff about American Girl dolls—she knew lots of things about them nobody else does. She said her dad works at the factory, and she gave me a coupon code for Meatloaf, because she already had a Meatloaf—”

“He got the address books off your and Jen’s phones, Dad. Call and text histories, too.” She hesitated. “I think he even friended me on Facebook.”

“They took our daughter,” I said. “They hurt the people I love. There are no lines. Not anymore.”

Seeing what I had done to my wife stabbed me through the heart. I wanted to take her place somehow, to change things so that I was the one hurt instead of her, and she was all right again. But I couldn’t undo this, no matter how badly I wanted to.

Like crudely-carved totem poles, a dozen waist-high statues of birds of prey stood in front of the workshop, for sale. I skidded to a halt in front of them and leaped out of the jeep.

But what if that adult handed Amy a phone so that someone she trusted could tell her it was okay to go? She might or might not have believed the voice of her psychiatrist, Simon Frank. But she would have trusted a voice that sounded exactly like me.

For a few years, “Terror Lennox” had been an underground legend. It was a name associated with puddles of blood drying on the floor of dirty Combat Zone basements.

“Why do you sound surprised?” she said. “You’ve given your protégé a crash course in lying, blackmail, extortion, and intimidation, Trevor. Computers take what humans teach them, and then do it faster and more efficiently. With Frankenstein’s bandwidth and processing power…”