Ultimate Nyssa Glass by H. Burke (ebook reader browser txt) 📗

he put on watch has this routine that involves walking in circles around the workshop for ten minutes out of every hour. I’ve been tracking it, and he’s like clockwork. So we’re basically on our own for another eight and a half minutes. Can we talk?”

“Of course.” She swallowed. “Have you made a decision about tomorrow?”

“No … yes … sort of. I don’t want to give Rivera any of Professor Dalhart’s research. What the professor did was bad enough, but at least he acted out of a twisted sense of right and wrong, trying to save his son and improve the human form. Rivera sacrificed his conscience on the altar of business ages ago.”

She drew closer to him, wishing she could put her arms around him, wishing he were Ellis. “You don’t have to. I won’t blame you if something happens to me. The fault will be Rivera’s, not yours.”

“Mathematically the idea of preventing God knows how many people from being hurt by Dalhart’s experiments should be worth the sacrifice of one individual, but when that individual is someone I care about, I don’t know if I’m strong enough to see that happen.”

“I’ll be strong for you.”

And in spite of the insanity of it, she meant it. Shock me, I’m willing to be torn apart piece by piece to ease the conscience of a computer. When did I get hit in the head? But still … better to get out alive.

“How long do we have until the guard comes back?” She dove for her satchel.

“Maybe five minutes now.”

“Probably not enough, but maybe I can get a signal out.” She fished her goggles out of her bag, put them on, and switched them to the night-vision setting. With the room painted in sickly green light, she quickly found the handheld.

“Please, Nyss, we can do that next time he goes on his rounds. Now, can we just talk for a minute?”

She hesitated, then slipped the handheld into her pocket and turned back to Hart. “I’m listening.”

“I was watching you sleep. You’re beautiful, Nyss. I could stare at you for centuries and never tire of it.”

Her cheeks warmed. Shock me, that’s something Ellis would say. How is he so much like Ellis without being Ellis?

“Thank you. I … I care about you, Hart.”

“Even though I’m just a computer?”

“You know you’re more than that to me.” Though even I’m not sure how this works.

“I don’t even know what I am. I thought I did, but the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. You can’t program morality and emotion. Yes, you can break them down to probability and mathematical values, but the way I work defies that. Mathematically, I should easily choose the good of humanity as a whole over the life of one person, but when that one person means something to me, I don’t. I don’t think like a computer. I think like a human.”

Nyssa bit her bottom lip, considering her options. “There’s something I’ve wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t while Rivera and his cronies were listening.”

“I’m halfway there on my own, I think. My program is too complex to be manmade. My best guess is it was copied. When you said you took me with you, I assumed it was a replication of my program. I was wrong, wasn’t I?”

She nodded, her throat tightening. “It was the original.”

A hiss that might’ve been a sigh rose from his monitor. “I was copied from a human, wasn’t I? A male human, I’m guessing from the way my thought process is fixated on you. One of the professor’s experimental subjects? A servant?”

“His son,” Nyssa choked out. A tear slipped over her cheek. “Ellis Dalhart.”

“Oh—that makes sense. The professor’s magnum opus was the ability to capture human memories in electronic form. My program must extrapolate the most likely emotional reactions from what it took from Ellis and make decisions based on that.”

“So your programming replicates Ellis’s emotions, even when he’s no longer hooked into you? Like an electric brain?”

“Considering the focus on emotions and morality, more like an electric heart.” He laughed. “Apparently, I’m aptly named.”

“Are you okay with —”

“The guard’s coming back.”

Nyssa dropped back onto her cot, shoving her goggles under the blanket.

A swish and a clank rose from the darkness. A masculine voice let forth a mild oath.

She propped herself up on her elbows. “What was that?”

“I shut the door between the office and the workshop. He’ll get it open in a minute, but I needed to ask you one more thing,” Hart said. “Nyss, this other me, the original me, do you love him?”

She closed her eyes, Ellis’s beloved smile flashing through her memory. “Yes. Deeply.”

“Okay. I’ll get you back to him. I promise.”

The door clanked again, and footsteps approached. “Cursed mechanical doors. What’s wrong with good old fashioned hinges?” the guard mumbled as he settled into a chair across the room.

Nyssa lay still, but her mind raced. Hart can shut the door? Would he be able to keep Rivera out? Of course, I’d still be trapped in here. There has to be a way to get out … and take Hart with me this time.

Chapter Ten

A hand shook Nyssa out of a restless sleep, and she glared up at Aito.

“I brought your breakfast,” he said, pushing a plate towards her.

As much as she wanted to hate him, the smell of eggs and sausage called to her like a long lost love. She snatched the plate from him. A fork balanced on the edge toppled towards the ground, but Aito caught it mid-air and presented it to her.

He clicked his tongue. “Settle down, Miss Glass. You’d think we’d been starving you.”

Nyssa had been up most of the night and hungry for half of it. She and Hart had talked whenever their guard left for his hourly stroll. Unfortunately, he was never gone for long enough for her to seriously put any plans in motion. All that she’d managed to achieve was a further