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When the twenty-seventh personality imprint tried to tear off his own skin, DiMA decided he had to do something.
The imprint had started off much like the others. Confused. Frightened. Half-lucid. Some of the imprints never even made it that far. DiMA watched through the glass as number twenty-seven struggled to full consciousness.
Two scientists sat behind a terminal console. The elder of the two, Dr. Otis, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and squinted at one of the monitors.
“Looking good so far,” he murmured under his breath.
“I’m just glad this one isn’t trying to kill us. That last one scared the hell out of me,” the other said.
They stared at their monitors, focused on the lines of incoming data. They hadn’t looked up when twenty-seven first began to move. Now he was feebly straining against the straps that held him to the reclined table, yet they seemed to take no notice. Only DiMA paid attention to the synth on the other side of the glass.
He watched as twenty-seven twitched his fingers, then his arm, then his shoulders, and so on, finding and testing the restraints. He began to murmur, quietly at first. As he grew louder, the words came out muddled and slurred. DiMA wondered if this imprint would find his speech at all. Some never did.
“Hello? Is anyone there?” He said at last.
DiMA pressed closer to the glass. Maybe this would be the one to make it. He looked forward to the prospect of having someone besides the scientists to talk with.
He glanced at them. They were still focused on their screens. Dr. Stevens, the younger one, spoke into a microphone.
“Can you state your name?” she said.
Twenty-seven’s eyes roved about the room with a fearful look.
“I—I can’t move,” he said.
“Just answer the question, prototype,” she said, sounding bored.
“What is this place? Why am I tied down?” His voice grew desperate.
Otis took off his glasses and rubbed his brow.
“It was a promising start, but I don’t know about this one,” he said.
“He’s just panicking. Let’s let him up and see how he does.”
They swept past DiMA and into the observation room. The imprint watched them with caution as they unbuckled the restraints. He rose from the table, his movements unsteady. He reached out for support, but the scientists offered none. He fell back and grasped the table.
“Can you state your name?” Stevens repeated.
The imprint furrowed his brow.
“I… I don’t know… everything’s mixed up…”
The look on his face was familiar to DiMA. He had seen it a dozen times before. Otis and Stevens had a terrible bedside manner. DiMA didn’t mind their distant, unemotional approach; it was normal to him. But the imprints were human personalities. It was obvious that they required a gentler hand—at least it was obvious to him. A different approach was necessary to make the imprint stick. If the scientists wouldn’t interact with twenty-seven the way they interacted with other humans, DiMA decided he would have to try.
He stepped into the room.
“We didn’t give you permission to—” Otis began, but Stevens cut him off.
“Wait, let’s see where this goes,” she said, gesturing for him to look at the imprint.
Twenty-seven was staring straight at DiMA, seeming more confused than before.
“What—what is—” he said.
DiMA walked closer. He tried to mimic the easy posture that humans displayed around their friends.
“There’s no need to worry. I’m no threat to you,” he said.
The imprint held up a hand to stop his approach. Then he caught sight of himself. His expression quickly changed to one of horror.
“What’s wrong with me?” He said in a trembling voice.
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” DiMA assured him. “See, you and I are alike.”
He held out his hands. The imprint regarded them for a time, glancing back and forth between DiMA’s and his own.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“We are twins. Brothers.”
Otis let out an impatient breath.
“Never should have used the word ‘twin’ in front of it,” he grumbled.
A hushed rattling began to emanate from the imprint’s inner mechanisms. DiMA knew the sound; it meant that he was on the cusp of a breakdown.
“No, I—I’m not—this makes no sense—” he said.
“It’s alright,” DiMA said. “I know you’re confused now, but everything will become clear sooner than you think.”
“This is a trick. This can’t be real. This isn’t—” he pulled up his shirt sleeve, feeling at his arm. “This isn’t me.”
“Please be patient—”
“You—you put me in this thing, didn’t you?” He pointed to the scientists. “What did you do to me? Get me out of this—this—”
He dug his fingers into the synthetic skin and pulled. A series of snaps rang out as the plate tore free.
DiMA lunged forward and grasped his wrists. Twenty-seven struggled to free himself. Suddenly he went rigid. DiMA looked up from his hands to find a strip of metal clamped around the imprint’s neck.
It was a control band; DiMA had only seen it once before, when they had to restrain the aggressive personality. Otis gripped a handle on the back of the band. With his other hand firmly on twenty-seven’s shoulder, he began pushing the imprint back toward the table.
DiMA held on. He looked to Stevens.
“Let me try again. He’s just confused,” he said.
Stevens shook her head.
“This one is faulty. Once the rejection subroutines set in, there’s no fixing it. Let it go.”
He hesitated, then released twenty-seven. He couldn’t afford to appear too rebellious; he had seen what happened to rogue synths.
Otis all but dragged twenty-seven to the table. The control band impeded most movement, which made it safe to handle malfunctioning synths, but also made it difficult for the synths to walk. The imprint pried weakly at the band.
“You’re hurting him,” DiMA said.
“It’s only simulated pain,” Stevens replied.
DiMA watched the scientists secure him to the table. Between the band and the straps, he couldn’t move at all. He caught DiMA’s eye. He said nothing. He didn’t need to. DiMA knew it was a cry for help.
Yet he felt just as trapped as twenty-seven.
The scientists returned to the control room and seated themselves behind the desk. Otis initiated the personality reset. A device rose out of the table and attached itself to the base of twenty-seven’s head. He gasped in surprise.
“Wait,” He said. “What are you going to do to me?”
Seeing the imprint—his likeness, his brother, in such a state—it was more than DiMA could tolerate. Before he could stop himself, he approached the table.
“Help me. Tell them to stop,” the imprint said.
DiMA looked at the scientists through the glass. They were focused on the monitors, same as before.
“Please,” The imprint’s voice broke.
DiMA positioned himself between him and the window. Then he took twenty-seven’s hand. He knew what came next. And he knew that he could not stop it.
The imprint cast him one more pleading look.
Then it happened. The reset program swept in, reaching into every recess of the imprint’s mind, destroying every bit of code that made this one unique. The imprints always fought it. Twenty-seven fought it more than most. He writhed against the restraints. His breath came in ragged gasps. A look of agony twisted his face. He gripped DiMA’s hand with a force that would have broken human bone.
Then his hand went slack, and DiMA knew it was over.
Otis lumbered back into the room. DiMA let go before the scientist could see. He stepped aside, letting Otis tend to the loose arm plate.
Simulated pain. It was a strange term for something that seemed so real. He had experienced it enough times. What made it any different from the pain humans felt? Isn’t all pain “simulated?”
He placed a hand on his twin’s brow.
“The skin’s not too damaged,” Otis said to Stevens. “I’ve secured it for now, but we’ll want to have the engineers come by in the morning. The whole thing will come right off if it pulls that stunt again.”
He made his way back to the desk. DiMA watched him from the corner of his eye.
“Who’s next on the list?” Stevens asked.
“Let's see… hmm. File says he was suffering from severe trauma and depression at the time of the personality scan. Are we sure we want to use this one? Might give us some trouble.”
“Yeah, let’s give it a shot. Looks like he’s one of the last pre-war personalities. Maybe he’ll be tougher than the last one.”
Otis yawned and looked at his watch.
“It’ll be pretty late by the time the upload is finished. It’s almost midnight now,” he said.
“So?”
“So I say we put a delayed wake-up on this thing and handle it in the morning.”
Stevens was quiet for a moment.
“Alright,” she said at last, “I could use some sleep.”
They started for the door.
“It’s time to go, prototype,” Otis said.
DiMA looked to Stevens.
“May I stay?”
She eyed him with suspicion.
“I won’t leave this room,” he added.
Again she was silent. A moment passed.
“See that you don’t,” she said.
The door closed behind them.
DiMA ran his hand over his eyes. It was a human gesture he never made use of before, but he thought the situation warranted it. After all, he had never lied before.
He waited until their steps faded, then went into the computer room and seated himself before the monitors. He could already tell that these were different from the one he was allowed to use. The first difference was that this terminal required a password. He typed it in without a second thought.
He had watched the scientists unlock it enough times to know the secret. He could have figured it out just by the sound of the keys, as often as he had listened to them. They never realized that he was paying attention. They thought he was no brighter than a human child, and treated him as such. He let them believe whatever they wanted. Though he had no reason to distrust them at first, something told him to be careful. Whether it was intuition or a bit of human suspicion unknowingly written into his programming, he could not say. After the sixth failed imprint, he knew he was right to be cautious.
He filtered his way through seemingly endless lines of data and matrices and maps, searching for one specific location. He found it faster than any human could. Had he not been so focused, he might have taken a moment to be proud. But his task was too important.
He sought access to the files—only to be stopped by another password. This gave him pause. He had toyed with the code on his terminal—making the words read backwards, mirror-imaged, upside-down, right-to-left, bottom-to-top, among countless other arrangements. He had designed puzzles and ciphers, and even written new programs that could almost hold a conversation with him. But hacking one of the scientists’ terminals — that was a new challenge. He settled himself and got to work.
He began by gently testing the protections, trying combinations at random and observing the reactions. Soon patterns began to emerge. He typed lines of code that were gradually more persuasive, trying to coax the program into revealing its weaknesses. He had to remind himself to work slowly, lest his speed set off any alarms. So he pressed on, writing in a language that came to him more naturally than speech.
The protections fell away, and all the information he wanted laid itself before him. He selected the instruction manual for the teleporter and began to read.
In under an hour, DiMA knew everything he needed. He closed out the files, rewrote the time stamps, and reset the protections. He was just about to leave when another thought occurred to him: even if his plan did succeed, there was nothing to stop the scientists from building another prototype and inflicting the same tortures on him.
Humans might have called what he did then “spiteful,” but he didn’t mind that at all. Before logging out of the terminal for good, he moved every remaining personality file to a holotape and stuffed it in his pocket. He couldn’t bring himself to delete them entirely. It felt too much like the book-burnings he had read about in history articles. Lost information was no good to anyone.
He initiated the wake-up, then went into the observation room.
The synth on the table was already moving, turning his head slowly from side to side, feeling at the restraints with his fingers, murmuring a string of tired sounds. His eyes fluttered open from time to time, but never stayed that way. He looked exactly like a weary man trying to get out of bed.
He was already more human than DiMA could ever be.
“Is the… is the scan done?” he mumbled, “Can I go home now?”
DiMA couldn't believe it. There was no fear in the imprint’s voice. Confusion, yes—not to mention a strange, gravelly tone—but not fear. This one might actually work.
“Can you tell me your name?” DiMA said, trying to sound and friendly as possible.
There was a pause. DiMA began to worry that he had set off the same reaction that ruined the last imprint. At last, the new imprint spoke.
“Nick Valentine,” he said.
DiMA smiled. It was the first time for that, too.
“I’m going to get you out of here, Nick.”
He nodded.
“…Sounds good. I need to… I need to get back to work…”
DiMA stepped closer, then paused.
“Before I do anything, there’s something you should know,” he said.
“Alright… shoot,” Nick’s words were still half-slurred.
DiMA wasn’t sure what that meant, but it seemed to be an agreement.
“I am a synthetic man, not a biological one. I might look… different from what you expect. I’m telling you this so that you won’t be frightened.”
“Takes all kinds,” he murmured.
DiMA removed the control band and began unfastening the restraints. Nick’s eyes were still closed when DiMA helped him off the table. He opened them and squinted at DiMA.
“You look like… like you could use some sun,” he said.
“We both could, I think. And that’s exactly what we're going to get.”
Nick nodded again, then closed his eyes. He began to sway. His knees buckled. He would have been on the floor if DiMA hadn’t caught him; he pulled his brother’s arm over his shoulders and got him on his feet.
“Nick? Are you still with me?”
“Wha…? Yeah… yeah, I’m awake…”
He started toward the door, glancing back at the computer room to make sure it looked the same as it did before his investigation. Then he caught sight of himself in the window. A shock of fear lanced through his mind. They would not make it twenty feet out the door looking like that. Aside from the oddity of one synth dragging another like a wounded soldier, their clothes had the wrong color designation. Every human and synth who saw them would know immediately that they were experiments. He sorted through his memories of the maps he had looked at earlier, then came up with a plan.
He laid Nick on the floor, leaning him against the wall.
“I’m going to leave for a time,” DiMA said. “It is very important that you stay right here. Do you acknowledge—I mean, do you understand?”
He considered replacing the control band as a safety measure. After a moment of thought, he decided against it. It felt wrong, somehow. He collapsed the band and placed it in his pocket.
“Sure… stay here… gotcha,” Nick said, then let his head dip to his chest.
DiMA hoped that sleepy behavior would sort itself before too long. His brother certainly would not be much of a companion in that state.
He peeked out the door to find that the hall was empty. Careful that the door shut behind him, he started toward the laundry facility. Synths did most of the work that the humans found distasteful; as a result, their uniforms got soiled quickly and often. It would be no challenge to find a disguise there.
He approached the laundry room, which he knew from the records would be empty for the night. Steps echoed from around a bend in the hall. Before DiMA could react, another synth, a Gen2, came into view.
DiMA kept his expression neutral and continued walking with purpose. The Gen2 almost passed him by. Then it stopped.
“You are a prototype. You do not have clearance to be here,” it said.
There was no question in its tone. Only command.
“Dr. Stevens gave me permission to familiarize myself with the facility,” DiMA said.
It was his second lie. He wondered how many more he would have to tell.
The Gen2 seized DiMA’s arm.
“You will return to the laboratory,” it said.
DiMA tried to guess how long he could argue before the other synth raised an alarm.
“I will return to the laboratory,” he said, and it was not a lie. Not quite.
Moving with more than human speed, he extended the control band and clamped it around the Gen2’s neck. It struggled for a brief moment, then straightened, falling into the default stance with its arms at its sides. DiMA guided it into a nearby linen closet. He took the Gen2’s uniform and instructed it to put on his now discarded prototype clothes. When the trade was complete, he commanded it to wait ten minutes, then go to the laboratory and lay down on the table. With any luck, no one would notice the decoy until morning.
DiMA took a deep laundry cart full of towels and started back toward the lab. He passed a small group of humans and two skeletal, Gen1 security synths on the way, but they took no notice of him. Still, he couldn't help but worry until they were well past him. He would have held his breath if he were in the habit. He had lungs, or something similar—it served the purposes of cooling his insides, sending air through his vocal mechanism, and making him appear more passably human. As he rarely overheated and didn’t much care to appear human, he only breathed when speaking.
Nick was still in the exact spot as before, only now he was laying down, gasping for breath. DiMA knelt to examine him.
“Nick? Get up, we have to go,” he said.
“…Too sick,” he grumbled, “wait… no, not sick. Something… something else… could use some fresh air, maybe.”
“The fresh air is this way. Look, I brought you a nice, soft bed to lay down on. Doesn’t that sound better than the floor?”
He mumbled something in response, but DiMA couldn’t make it out. It didn’t matter. He lifted his brother and placed him in the cart, covering him with towels before heading out the door.
The halls were quiet. DiMA was glad for his soft shoes; they made almost no noise as he walked. Nick began to shift under the towels.
“Hey… where are we going?” He mumbled.
“Away,” DiMA said under his breath. “But we must be very quiet.”
His brother braced a hand on the side of the cart and began to lift himself up. DiMA shoved him back down. He glanced around to check for witnesses, but the place was empty. He would have been happy with his brother’s progress were it not for the poor timing.
They took the elevator to the top floor. The hall to the teleporter was just as empty as all the others. Once inside the room, he lifted Nick from the cart and placed him on the platform. DiMA drew away to find, to his surprise, that Nick’s eyes were open. They still had a look of exhaustion about them, but they remained open nonetheless.
“Who are you?” He asked.
DiMA hesitated to answer, remembering how well the word “brother” went over last time.
“Like I said before: I’m the synth who’s going to get you out of here,” he said.
“You make it… make it sound like I’m a prisoner or something.”
“You won’t be for much longer.”
In the distance, the bell of the elevator rang out. DiMA hurried to the control panel and keyed in the transport codes. He didn’t bother with working slowly. More likely than not, that bell meant that an alert of some sort had already been sent out.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nick struggling to sit up.
“Wait—don’t move—just a moment longer—” he said.
“I’d sure like to know what’s going on here,” Nick said. His voice was stronger than before, more sure.
Quiet footsteps echoed in the hall, drawing closer. The teleporter was nearly ready.
“Everything will make sense once we get to the other side—please be patient. And most importantly, don’t move.”
“That goes for both of you,” came a voice from the door.
DiMA spun to face the familiar sound. It was Stevens. She gripped a laser pistol in one hand. In the other, she held up a holotape.
“Found this downstairs,” she said. “I thought to myself, ‘now what would a holotape full of personalities be doing out here? It couldn't be my prototype’s doing, because he said he would stay in the lab.’ Yet sure enough, when I went back to the lab, I discovered that you were missing. Oh, and nice try with that replacement. Did you honestly think that I wouldn’t notice the difference?”
“How did you find me?”
“It wasn't difficult. I just followed the idiot trying to teleport laundry.”
DiMA’s mind raced. The teleporter wasn’t ready yet—he had to stall for time.
“If you knew it was me, why didn’t you stop me sooner?” He said.
“I wanted to see how far you would get,” she said, as though it were a matter of course. “I knew you were smarter than you let on, but you’re not nearly as clever as you think.”
She pointed the laser pistol at him, then drew something from her pocket and tossed it his way. It was a control band.
“Now put that on and let’s get going. If you cooperate, we can pretend this never happened.”
He knew that was a lie. She was too smart to trust a defiant synth. She would erase his memories as soon as they got back to the lab.
He flung the band at her face. She flinched. It was just long enough for him to dash forward and grab her by the wrist. He folded her arm against her, getting out of the pistol’s way just as she pulled the trigger. Instead of hitting DiMA, the blast seared through her shoulder. The holotape clattered to the ground. She doubled over, clutching at her wound.
“You son of a bitch,” she growled through her teeth. “What’s your plan, huh? What do you think is up there? The world’s gone to shit. The people are no better than animals. We’re making a difference down here. You could have been useful to us in that effort, but no, you had to go and get sentimental.”
She let out another groan and sank to her knees.
“Damn it, this hurts.”
DiMA kelt before her. He picked up the holotape.
“Don’t worry. It’s only simulated pain,” he said.
He stood, initiated the final teleport command, and joined his brother on the platform.
Stevens cast him a glare, her fingers dripping with blood, her eyes dark with venomous anger. There was a flash of blue, a scream like a violin, and the room disappeared in a blinding light.