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ROMULUS ESCAPES

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CHAPTER ONE

  

Romulus had a scalpel in his hand when the notification popped up in his display. RUST. He was a Fax—a machine—and his mechanical problems had steadily worsened in recent years. Not wanting the nurses to suspect, he dialed some arrogance onto his normally bland expression and started the surgery.

The patient was a Real—a human—whose VR implant had stopped working. The interface lay under a patch of synthskin on his temple. Romulus cut through and found the problem. One of the transistors had burned out. He removed it, installed a new one, and sutured the tissue back, finishing the procedure in less than thirty minutes. A little more arrogance inadvertently worked its way onto his face as he strutted out of the operating room.

“Wake up and smell the hydraulic fluid,” JOAN, his internal assistant, said. She existed only in his metaverse. They could hear each other, but no one else could. “You may have fooled the nurses, but don’t try to fool yourself.”

“I did that surgery in record time,” Romulus shot back. “I’m as good as I ever was.”

“You need a complete overhaul,” she yelled. “You are an old, rusting Fax. The Reals will recycle you if they figure out how many problems you have. You are forty years old. That’s thirty-three years out of warranty.”

“How do I afford a complete overhaul? You know I am short of coin.”

“You have to beg Rhymin’ Ryan to finance it.”

“I hate that guy. And I haven’t even paid off my last loan to him. He’ll tack on refinancing fees and aging-Fax surcharges.”

“You have no choice. Your ratings have been trending down over the years.”

“I am still the best. Reals from all over the world come to me.”

“You are at 4.76. Ten years ago, your ratings were at 4.97. You’re only as good as your last surgery. Your problems will catch up with you. When things fall apart, they fall apart fast. What if some rust clogs your lines while you’re cutting into someone?”

She was right. She was almost always right. “I guess I have no choice.”

The next six surgeries went by without incident, but during the last one, a gallbladder removal, another notification popped up. BATTERY. It hadn’t been holding a charge lately. That was something else for Ryan to finance.

Thankfully, there was nothing scheduled after the gallbladder. He stepped out of the operating room and was about to clock out when General Martin, the Supreme Leader of The Hospital, marched down the hall with a group of soldiers in jeans and Stetsons.

They stopped in front of Romulus. “I need to talk to you, boy,” he said in his distinctive drawl.

This was bad. General Martin only spoke to you if you were in trouble. Romulus snapped to attention and saluted. “Yes, sir, General Martin. What do you need, sir?”

Martin was scary. He had piercing blue eyes, a cross tattoo on his forehead, and a sneer so permanent that it looked like a tattoo. He wore a big red Stetson and a matching red western shirt with pearl snaps. “The ga damned Rogue Faxes are attacking. There will be casualties. You got to stay.”

“Sir, I’ve been here forty-eight hours straight. I need to charge my battery.”

“Are you questioning my order?”

“No, sir.”

“I am a Real and your Supreme Leader. You are a Fax. You may look like a Real, but you aren’t. A Fax’s priority is what?”

“To obey.”

“So, obey your programming.”

“But I need a quick charge, at least, if I’m going to function properly.”

Martin snickered. So did the soldiers. “Yes, yes, you are old. Maybe you should ask the Fair Fax Bureau about getting a new battery.”

The last thing any Fax dared do was go to the Bureau. You could end up sentenced to clown torture. “Oh, no, I don’t want to do that.”

“Okay. Get a quick charge and report to East Wing.”

They marched on, and Romulus trudged past a kidney repair center, a TruSnak™ dispensary, a spare parts market, and up two flights of steps to a charging chair that wasn’t on the map. The Hospital was a behemoth few could navigate, but Romulus had worked in it all his life and didn’t need to look at a map. Besides, the map only showed you what Martin wanted to show you.

The chair was in a quiet hall in Recycling Wing 3. It had been there from the beginning when Romulus had just come off the assembly line. His first assignment was to help repair Fax parts in Wing 3, and he fondly remembered sitting on that chair.

He sat and selected double quick charge, then blinked to bring the notifications to full screen. It showed him seventeen microunits over brown rust oxide limits, worse than ever. He’d set up a fake rust profile that sent false data to the server, making him appear healthy.

Had they found out about that? Was that why Martin had shown up?

To get through the extra shift, he released some TruSnak™ from his reservoir. TruSnak™ was the lifeblood of all Faxes. It brought all his mechanical, hydraulic, and electric systems into harmony. It would minimize the impact of the rust and help preserve his battery levels.

As the sustenance moved through him, he retreated into the favorite scene in his metaverse: a beach with white sand. JOAN built sandcastles. She had black braids, black glasses, and a black bathing suit.

A sailboat glided across glittering blue water; the sun was warm on his synthskin, and the sand felt good on his toes. He enabled his favorite mix track: DJ Fax playing RoboSlick music, a pleasing combination of clanging industrial sounds laid over a hard bassline and a 140-beat-per-minute drum track. Nothing went better with a day at the virtual beach than soothing music.

He couldn’t relax, though. General Martin had spoken to him. He’d probably figured out about the rust and would sell him off for parts. Romulus’s programming told him to accept anything a Real did, even recycling.

But he didn’t want to die.

“Don’t get upset, Romulus,” a voluptuous blond avatar said. She sat on a towel next to him as she always did when he went to the beach.

“But why didn’t they just arrest me? That’s what usually happens. They arrest you, and no one ever sees you again. Why didn’t he do that?”

“Oh, who knows? Come on. Let’s swim.”

They ran across the sand, she in her string bikini and he in his Speedos, and dove into the crystal blue water.

When they manufactured him, all Faxes came off the assembly line with thin, lanky bodies, white hairless synthskin, and blond hair. They all had the same parts, including private parts, because that allowed for the cheapest manufacturing. Romulus had extra computing components to make him a surgeon, but that had left no room for pleasure modules to enable sexual performance.

In his metaverse, everything worked. The touch of her synthskin excited him.

They swam so far that he couldn’t see the shore.

“We’re escaping,” he said. “We don’t have to live our lives the way the Reals want. We can have freedom.”

“Yes. Yes.”

Suddenly, she punched him in the side.

“Why are you doing that?” he asked.

“You are out of time, Romulus.”

It wasn’t the avatar, and the voice wasn’t coming from his metaverse. It was General Martin.

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