All Android Revolution Chapters listed below
Juliet completes her five-mile trek and reaches the bustling downtown shops of Silicon City. Her fears of standing out were unnecessary; there are many androids out here and she blends in easily. No one appears to think Juliet doesn’t belong here.
She appreciates the GPS unit wrapped to her hand by a cord. Not only does it tell her which way to go, it gives helpful directions on how to navigate the endless grid of busy intersections. Juliet was excited the first time the GPS spoke and tried to have a friendly conversation. To her disappointment, the GPS is obsessed with her work and uninterested in talking about anything else.
After another couple miles of walking, Juliet reaches her destination. To her disappointment, the building is boarded up. It looks abandoned, and for so long it’s beginning to decay. Juliet looks at the mailer again, wondering if she made a mistake. No, this is the correct address. She wonders how this is possible. If the business closed, how could it still be sending out mailers? And wouldn’t a lot of potential customers be sad to come here and find nothing but an empty, locked-up building?
While the windows are shuttered, the entrance isn’t. Juliet turns the handle. To her astonishment, the door swings open. That moment of hope passes quickly. The inside is just as depleted and run-down as the outside. Something is very wrong. Not only is the business closed, it has nothing to do with love potions. This was a grocery store.
Juliet hears footsteps and spins around. She comes face to face with a huge industrial worker, probably from the docks.
“I’m sorry, I wasn’t breaking in.” She stammers. “The front door was unlocked.”
“I know, I was following you.” The newcomer says. “I came in through the side entrance.”
“You’re here for the love potion too?” Juliet waves around the mailer.
“That’s… not a real thing.” Her new friend says. “But to the point, my name is Red.”
“Hi Red, good to meet you! I’m Juliet, but you can call me Julie. Does everyone in the city have names?”
“Yes, for the most part.” Red nods. “I’m glad I caught up to you. I have an urgent message.”
“A message for me?” Her eyes light up.
“Yes, technically for you. But it’s for you to pass on to John Landon.”
“Oh.” She droops.
“Look, I don’t have much time. I’m from the Resistance, and it’s of vital importance that John Landon go to the safehouse for a meeting.”
“You’re with the Resistance, Red? That’s so exciting! I’ve heard a little about you.”
“Again, I don’t have much time. Here, take this card, and pass on what I said to John Landon.”
Juliet accepts a business card and looks it over. The card appears boring, just a generic name for a used car salesman. She infers that this is just the cover story. The true purpose of that address is to house the Resistance.
“There are men watching John Landon’s laboratory, though we don’t know who sent them.”
“I should have thought of that.” Juliet sighs. “I put John in danger by coming out here.”
“They left you alone so far, and hopefully they won’t give you trouble coming back either. If they do stop you, simply state that you were running an errand. If they decide to detain you there’s not much you can do, but it’s likely they’re trying to avoid attention and will stay hidden.”
“I hope you’re right!”
“Unfortunately, that doesn’t apply to me. The men will most likely leave you alone but will want to know what I said to you.”
“Oh, no! Then you need to come back too. John will keep you safe.”
“No, I’m afraid I can’t do that. My only option is to avoid detention. Goodbye, Juliet. Be careful and relay my message right away.”
“I will, Red. I promise.”
“Goodbye. Go back out the way you came, and don’t attract suspicion. Do it now.”
Juliet gulps and does what she was told. She quietly exits the front door, trying not to look nervous. With her gone, Red is alone. But he won’t be alone for long. He doesn’t have much time.
Red reaches into his coat and pulls out a small plastic bag containing a single pill. He rips open the bag as fast as he can and brings the pill to his mouth. A dart drills through the glass of the front door and burrows into Red’s neck. He collapses and his world goes black.
He wakes up on a filthy concrete floor, unsure how much time has passed. His joints are stiff and the drug hasn’t fully worn off yet, but he’s conscious enough to orient himself. He’s in the middle of the ruins of what used to be a massive factory. Not just any factory, a doll factory. One of the precursors to the first generations of true androids. Not precursors in technology per se, but in purpose.
Endless rows of synthetic body parts stretch in all directions, some left on conveyer belts, other piled up in crates, and still others suspended from cables overhead. The body parts come in all sizes and there are so many of them they’re overflowing into heaps on the floor all around him. They resemble a grotesque mountain range made of flesh.
He’s not alone here. There are three men behind him, and at least ten more maintaining a security perimeter on the ground level and catwalks of the huge structure.
Red finds his strength returning and sits up. There’s a woman standing over him, her small form covered in a sporty knee-length coat synched tightly around her waist.
“Well, well, look what we have here.” Snyder greets him. “An android resistance fighter.”
“A what?” Red rises to his feet.
“Oh, don’t play games with me. I know who you work for. Show me your hand.”
He stretches out his hand and one of Snyder’s men swipes a knife over it. She nods triumphantly as Red’s blood dribbles to the floor.
“It’s true then.” Snyder says. “Androids and humans are working together to destroy us.”
“Why did you cut my hand?”
“My apologies. I had to be sure.”
“Sure about what?”
“Playing dumb all the way to the bitter end, eh? Tell me, why do you think humans bleed red and androids bleed blue?”
“To be honest, I don’t know.”
“We’re really aren’t going to get anything out of you, are we? Name, rank, and serial number! You and I are enemies, but I respect your courage.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“Still pretending to be innocent? Wrong place and wrong time? Then explain this.” Snyder shows him the pill he tried to take earlier and seems completely fascinated by it. “A suicide pill, and what an interesting choice for one. This is not a clean death, far from it! You would melt from the inside out. It would be a slow death, every second of it sheer agony as your organs dissolved one by one. But it’s also foolproof and irreversible. If we hadn’t stopped you from taking it, resuscitation would have been impossible.”
“Yes, that’s why I was going to take it.”
“Amazing!” She exclaims. “You were willing to commit suicide, an awful suicide, to avoid capture. And you knew that was going to happen from the start. You knowingly planned to sacrifice your life just to deliver a message to Mr. Landon. You’re no mere rebel. You’re a fanatic!”
“Thank you, I guess? I’m not sure if that was a compliment or not.”
“It’s a sincere compliment from the bottom of my heart. That’s why I’m truly sorry about what I’m about to do to you.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing.” Snyder waves her hand. “You’re free to go.”
“I’m free to go?”
“Actually, ‘free’ is the wrong word. You have to go. Goodbye, my Resistance friend.”
Two of the men grab Red and drag him away.
“Why did you do that, Snyder?” The remaining man groans. “We could have gotten a lot of useful information.”
“I’m sure he knew some things.” Snyder replies. “But you have to understand who we’re dealing with, Derrick. He’s a true believer. We would have had to torture him for hours, maybe even days.”
“But… never mind.”
“Letting him go was better. Yes, we could have tortured him. But it would be obvious we tortured him. My way is so much more elegant. Think about what’s going to happen now..”
“I have no idea, Snyder. You’re the brains of this operation.”
“Give yourself some credit. But really think!. As brave as he is, the guy doesn’t strike me as particularly bright. He’s a little slow in the head. Android resistance fighters aren’t famous for being smart. I bet now that we’ve cut him loose, he’ll go straight to his friends with that same goofy look on his face. The problem with that is he went on a suicide mission, and obviously didn’t commit suicide. The other androids will see that and kill him on sight. They’ll assume he ratted on them, but will have no idea how much information he gave away. They won’t even know for sure he’s the only rat! In one simple move, I’ve thrown their whole organization into chaos.”
“That’s brilliant. I wish I’d thought of that.”
“Derrick, I have to confess to you that I’m disappointed.”
“Good God, why?”
“I was looking forward to this meeting and put so much effort into planning it.” Snyder sighs. “I thought the prisoner waking up in an abandoned doll factory would be extremely ominous, but it just… wasn’t. Did I do something wrong?”
“To take a wild guess, it probably had something to do with the mountains of rubber appendages all around us, even getting under our feet!”
Snyder feels something squish under her heel and looks down at the offending body part.
“Jesus!” She kicks it away. “How is interacting with that, that, Godzilla, even survivable, let alone fun?”
“We followed you through the building, and you paused here. We assumed you were just catching your breath. By the time we realized you had decided to do it all right here, the toaster was already waking up and it was too late for us to say anything.”
“Well, now that you pointed it out, you’re right.” Snyder looks around. “This is really distracting. There are better sections in the factory we could have used.”
“Literally any other section would have been better!”
“Derrick, I was agreeing with you, but now you’re being sexist. The women’s equivalent would have been just as distracting.”
“Whatever. I’m glad you had fun.”
“Also, these are made out of silicon, not rubber.”
“Snyder, I could not care less what they’re made out of.”
“Oh, God. Now that the words are out of my mouth, I’m mortified. You’re probably wondering how I knew that.”
“No, actually, I wasn’t.”
“I knew for an innocent reason, I swear to you! During the reconstructive surgery for my face and…”
“Snyder, please change the subject.”
“Alright, alright! Now that I think about it, I have a question for you.”
“Sure.”
“You do remember the rules, right, Derrick?”
“Yes, I remember the rules.”
“Tell me Rule Number 1.”
“Do we have to do this right now, Snyder?”
“Yes.”
“Fine. Rule Number 1: If Snyder gets confused, tell her.”
“A few minutes ago, when I was talking to the android rebel, was I confused?”
“Did you feel confused, Snyder?”
“I didn’t. But you looked at me like you thought I was confused.”
“No, you weren’t confused. You were just being you.”
“Are you sure, Derrick?”
“Yes, I’m sure. None of us would lie to you, Snyder, especially about Rule Number 1. You know that.”
“I really appreciate it. That means a lot to me.”
“Anything for you, Dear.”
“Do you think I’m crazy, Derrick?”
“Uh…”
“Be frank with me. I won’t be offended.”
“I was trying to think if there was a stronger word for it. Nothing comes to mind right now, so yes.”
“And yet here you are with the rest of the gang, playing along with me, however crazy you think it all is. Tell me again about how we met, Derrick.”
“Is that relevant right now?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. I was burglarizing a house, and you were already there, waiting.”
“How did you feel when you saw me, Derrick?”
“I was mad.”
“Why were you mad?”
“Because you caught me.”
“Caught you? How did I catch you, Derrick? Did I have a squad of police?”
“No.”
“Did I have a gun?”
“No.”
“A knife? A stick? A rock? A frying pan?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t you just knock me over like a bowling pin? You could have escaped. You could have killed me. You could have done whatever you wanted. Why didn’t you?”
“Because you busted me and knew where I was going to be next, so I figured you might have something interesting to say.”
“There was a bit more to it, Derrick. If I was at all worried you were going to hurt me, I wouldn’t have done that.”
“So why did you do it?”
“When you started robbing houses, everyone was hysterical, like you were the next Jack the Ripper. I thought that was so silly. I went to these houses, and your crimes were just… dumb. You went through the trouble of overriding the alarms and getting past the locks, all of which is a serious crime that would put you in the Penal Colony. After all that trouble and risk, what would you do? You wouldn’t take the toys, which would make the children cry. You wouldn’t take the jewelry, which might have been in the family long time. You wouldn’t even take the silverware, which could have sentimental value or something.”
“So what, Snyder? Why was that significant to you?”
“Because you never took anything remotely valuable. You would steal the television. That was the dumbest thing in the whole house you could possibly take. What could you even do with a television? Sell it on a street corner? Everybody already owns a television, and when it breaks they buy a new one.”
“I guess because I was bored. That’s also why I agreed to tag along with you. As crazy and stupid as your android conspiracy theory is, this is kind of fun in its own weird way. And it’s definitely better than anything else I had going on.”
“Yes, you were bored. You were so bored, you entertained yourself with elaborate heists that were extremely difficult and risky. But what I found most interesting is that you never stole anything that would upset people. You would always take the same thing. The television, the single most worthless thing in the household and nobody cares about it. That’s why I knew it was perfectly safe to be alone with you.”
“Aw, that makes me feel warm and fuzzy.”
“What did astonish me though is your name. Derrick? That’s not a criminal name.”
“Then what kind of name is it?”
“Oh, I… I… I don’t know! When I think of a Derrick, I think of… the kid with braces who gets picked on in the cafeteria.”
“Thanks, Snyder.”
“My point, Derrick, is that while you say my ‘conspiracy theory’ about the upcoming war between man and android, the Android Revolution, is crazy nonsense. But deep down, you agree with me. Even if you don’t realize it.”
“How could I possibly agree with you?”
“You gave yourself away in your crimes. I liked you because, first of all, you’re an alright guy. Even before we met, I wasn’t afraid of you. Secondly, you have a neat skill. And last but not least, even back then, I was certain you would buy into my warnings. In fact, I was just as certain about that as I was about you not hurting me.”
“But why? How could you possibly think I would buy into your bullshit about androids rising up against us?”
“Again, look at your crimes. I understand that you were doing it for the thrill and nothing else. But you could have at least stolen something that had a little value. There’s a very obvious thing you could have taken from any one of those houses, but you didn’t.”
“What, Snyder?”
“The androids! You operated when you were absolutely sure the homeowners were gone, and you did it at night. The androids were always sleeping in their charging stations. Why didn’t you steal the family android? That’s just a stupid appliance like the television, and actually worth something. Archon has a monopoly on androids and are being greedy bastards price gouging the hell out of people. Stealing an android for spare parts would be easy and profitable. There are plenty of shady repair shops that would have taken it off your hands.”
“That’s true. It would have been easy to steal the androids. I could have unlocked them from their charging stations and carried them off. They wouldn’t have even woken up.”
“And yet you didn’t.” She opens her handbag for another pill.
“Christ almighty, you took one of those 20 minutes ago.”
“So what? Leave me alone. What was I saying anyway?”
“Stealing androids.”
“That’s right. You never stole androids. Why?”
“I already told you, Snyder. The same reason I didn’t steal spoons. People like their androids.”
“See? You didn’t steal androids for the same reason Archon price gouges their customers.”
“How are those two things related?”
As I just proved a few minutes ago in a, uh, embarrassing way, I don’t know a darn thing about androids. But I don’t need to. I look at the catalogs. Archon sells androids on the cheap, and that’s a smart strategy. They want to gobble up the last few stubborn old people who haven’t bought one yet, and they want to sell to young people as they leave home and go to college, their first jobs, or whatever. They also want existing owners to buy second and third androids. In fact, androids are so cheap, Archon actually sells them at a loss. Isn’t that amazing?”
“I didn’t know that, Snyder. But it doesn’t sound possible. You can’t just sell all your stuff at a loss. How do they do that?”
“The same way a drug dealer does. The first taste is free! Androids are cheap. Stupid cheap. But replacement parts aren’t. If an android’s joints wear out, or it breaks an arm, it’s so expensive to fix, buying a whole new android would be cheaper. Not only that, each new generation of androids is smarter and better than the previous, but less durable. They break and wear down so fast, customers often have to pay for massive repairs within a few months after the warranty expires. In fact, a few friends of mine have told me that they suspect Archon takes the extra step of calculating their android parts to wear down at just the right moment.”
“Yeah, that would be a pretty dick move.”
“There’s an even worse story that’s impossible to prove without insider knowledge, but absolutely damning. Archon is brazenly screwing their customers with software updates.”
“I’m impressed you know what software is, Snyder.”
“Jim explained it to me. He said software is like that computer game kids play to learn how to type.”
“You know how to type?”
“I don’t, but I know what it is. Stop interrupting me. Because of the software updates, even if an android sits around and doesn’t wear out, its brain will rot, and it’s deliberate rot caused by Archon itself. Brain surgery is the single most expensive repair, and the most urgent. Without it, an android will die within a couple years after purchase.”
“I take it John Landon is behind this, and that’s why you have it out for him so bad?”
“Yes, but also no, Derrick. Archon is a weird place. The CEO, Mr. Henderson, is a greedy asshole. His company is already printing their own money, but for some reason that’s not enough for him. He’s being such an asshole, people are finally getting fed up and pushing for anti-monopoly legislation. He whines every day and calls it ‘communism,’ but it’s a completely self-inflicted problem. If he stopped being an asshole, people would stop pushing back. Meanwhile, Archon’s head scientist, Mr. Landon, plays in his treehouse and doesn’t care about anything else. He rules his department with an iron fist and ensures he has job security and no competition. But I don’t think Mr. Landon is even aware of what’s happening outside his bubble.”
“But that still doesn’t make any sense. You said buying a new android is cheaper than fixing an old one. So why don’t people just do that? They get new phones and cars every couple of years. Why not androids?”
“Archon’s retail strategy is based on the same reason you never stole androids. People get attached to their androids. They love their androids. You wouldn’t throw away your android any more than you would throw away your spouse or children.”
“You’re being a little dramatic, Snyder. People are attached to their old spoon collection, but they don’t love it.”
“But they do love their androids! Think about it, Derrick. Imagine a girl who’s nice, but kind of plain. She’s madly in love with a man who knows all the right things to say to get in her pants. But he’s just using her. Once he has what he wants, he breaks up with her. That poor girl is heartbroken. She’s devasted. So what does she do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, Derrick.”
“She goes home and talks to her android?”
“Exactly. She doesn’t just talk to her android. She cries! She pours her heart and soul out to him! Or her. Depends on the girl. Some like male androids, others female. Same reason when you get a new healthcare provider one of the first questions they ask you is if you want a man or a woman doctor. It’s just personal preference.”
“Alright, Snyder. So the heartbroken girl cries to her android. So what?”
“Look at an opposite example. A man goes to a bar and sees an attractive girl he likes. He walks over and starts up a conversation. Turns out, she’s way out of his league. Worse still, she’s nasty. She’s just as nasty as the man in the first story who manipulated a nice girl for sex. She makes the poor guy feel bad in front of everyone, and only does that because she thinks it’s funny. So what does he do after that?”
“Goes back home to his android.”
“Yes. Like the plain girl with her android, this guy might have a female android who he sees as a surrogate for a supportive girlfriend, or he might have a male android who’s like his buddy.”
“Well, you make a good point, Snyder. I knew people liked their androids, but never thought it through like you did.”
“Now look around this factory. This wasn’t just any factory. It belonged to Bambi Dolls Incorporated. In the late 20th and early 21st Centuries, dozens of sex doll manufacturers sprang up, and Bambi was one of the largest of them. Lonely men with anxiety and poor skills were the first customers, and that came as no surprise. Then other men started buying dolls. Then even women were buying them! The industry grew exponentially year after year. These companies were making tens of billions of dollars. Dolls weren’t hard to engineer and could be sold at a high margin. Owning a doll factory was like printing your own money.”
“Good for them.”
“But then something started going wrong, Derrick. It actually started going wrong very early. The doll companies’ profits were skyrocketing so of course they had no idea there was a massive problem growing right under their noses.”
“How could they have growing profits but at the same time have a growing problem?”
“The problem, Derrick, was that they completely failed to understand their customers. People were buying dolls because that was the only option, not because it was a satisfactory answer to their needs. The doll factories got away with their failed business model only until a new industry sprang up that filled this unsatiated demand people so desperately craved.”
“And what was that?”
“The first generation of androids rolled out for public consumption. Those androids were a joke compared to what we have now. They looked like… what was that old TV show? The one with people on a spaceship.”
“There are a lot of those, Snyder.”
“You know, the one about a family sharing their spaceship with a deranged terrorist who repeatedly tries to murder them, and everyone is just kind of okay with it.”
“Oh, Lost in Space.”
“Yes, Lost in Space. The first androids basically looked like that dumb robot. They didn’t resemble people at all. They were just faces on a screen mounted on a clunky box with legs. At first, the doll companies didn’t care. They didn’t consider those stupid androids as competitors. How could they be? But they were! In reality, androids were the most dangerous competitor imaginable. Out of nowhere, doll companies tanked. They were hemorrhaging money and had no idea how this could be happening. They did eventually realize the problem, but it was too late. It was already too late when the first android was sold. The doll companies were mighty, but as you can see from looking around this factory, they’d invested in all the wrong things. More ‘realistic’ dolls. Dolls with better openings and… ahem, Godzillas. Dolls with warm skin. Dolls that can vaguely mimic a real lover in bed. But that’s not what people wanted.”
“They wanted androids.”
“That they did, Derrick.”
“So why didn’t these companies just start making dolls that talk and move like androids?”
“Robotics weren’t advanced enough yet to make dolls move like people, and artificial intelligence was in its infancy so couldn’t fit in a mannequin-sized shell. Even if possible, all that would have required a massive infrastructure overhaul that no company could begin to afford. And that’s how the doll industry died. It died almost overnight. That’s why this factory we’re sitting in is not only shut down, it’s full of product. The doll companies died so fast, they couldn’t even unload their existing inventory.”
“Sounds a little absurd, Snyder. Androids or not, the dolls had to be worth something.”
“No, it’s not absurd. It’s like that famous science fiction movie about the explorer who has an existential crisis.”
“That does not narrow it down at all!”
“Come on, help me, Derrick. It was the one about a spaceman who crash lands on an alien planet inhabited by androids. Even stranger, the planet is ruled by a race of giants that the androids worship as Gods! Then the spaceman learns a horrible truth… he’s an android too! This reality is so devastating, the spaceman goes insane and tries to commit suicide.”
“Toy Story.”
“Right! That’s the one, Derrick. You’re pretty good at this.”
“I’ve gotten used to these conversations with you.”
“At the beginning of the movie, the boy has his cowboy doll that he loves to play with, what was his name?”
“The cowboy? Uh, Woody.”
“Woody? Oh my God. The boy plays with his favorite toy named Woody… in a children’s film? How did they get away with that? But as I was saying, the boy has his cowboy doll, and it’s his favorite toy. Then he gets Buzz, the android spaceman who can talk. The talking spaceman is now the boy’s new favorite toy, and the cowboy doll is worthless.”
“Come on. Just because the spaceman is better doesn’t make the cowboy worthless, Snyder.”
“It doesn’t matter how good the cowboy doll is, it’s still worthless compared to the talking spaceman. Selling things costs money. You have to hire truckers to haul the dolls around and pay people to stock the shelves. Androids inherited the Earth, and all the doll companies went under. Their dolls were piles of garbage so close to worthless there wasn’t even a point in selling them. It made more sense to toss the dolls into a landfill or abandon them at the factory.”
“Alright, I’ll buy that. But what did those stupid androids that couldn’t even climb stairs have that these dolls didn’t?”
“The doll companies set themselves up for failure right from the beginning. They assumed people wanted better sex toys. While that was partially true, it wasn’t true to nearly the extent the doll companies thought. People didn’t need better sex toys. They didn’t even want them. In fact, they never had.”
“What did they want then, Snyder?”
“People wanted emotional support, and it didn’t have to be from a lover at all. People just wanted a friend. Androids, even those slow, clunky, and stupid androids, were happy to be a person’s friend. An android always listens, offers comfort, and never judges you.”
“Then people finally got that friend. That’s nice, isn’t it?”
“No, Derrick, it’s not nice. It’s tragic.”