Free Re-Wired by Greg Dragon Page B

night, and I trust you, so… I want you to say it.”
    “Will you be my girlfriend?”
    “Yes!”
    A trip that had started out as one of their standard dates had quickly become one of the best days in Brad’s life. He and Priscilla had kept on doing movie nights at her house after the day Tricia had cleaned up, but she wouldn’t sleep with him, at least not until last night. Tricia had gotten better about his frequent absence, and he left her to take care of the house when he was away—especially since he practically lived with Priscilla, whose home was amazing. He found it strange that after visiting his home and commenting on how “cozy” it was, Priscilla seemed unwilling to hang out there or ask him questions about it. So he spent most of his time at her place, eating her food, watching her television, and being with her.
    The routine would go as follows: he would go to work in the morning, stop by the gear shop to sell a few rotors, and then drive to Priscilla’s house in the evening to hang out and sleep at night. He had been doing this for two months now, and Priscilla didn’t seem to mind. Rotors were what he called the tiny, flying robots he made from excess mechanical parts. He had gotten better with artificial intelligence, and began to hustle the little toys for extra money to supplement his small barista’s income. Career-wise he viewed himself as a failure, and he struggled internally with whether to reveal the genius of Tricia to the world or to keep her as his personal secret.
    Tricia’s revealing would get him arrested, at least for a time due to her illegal parts. But she would revolutionize modern robotics, and he would be on every talk show across America. After the talk shows, he’d be approached by a private company and they would throw millions of dollars at him to replicate the process. Tricia would cease to be special, and would more than likely be disassembled and reverse-engineered. This latter fact made him not want to do it. She was a person, a person he had built, and he didn’t want her murdered and dissected for money. But being with Priscilla brought the pressure of wanting to do more. There would be outside competition from men that had a lot more than he had, and could do a lot more for her than he could. There is nothing special about me. I’m just a broke, coffee pusher , he thought. So it was out of fear that he’d begun selling rotors.
    It had crossed his mind to make another Tricia, but this time keep the A.I. restrained, and remove the ability to freely think from it. The idea could work, if not for the skin he couldn’t afford, and the things he had done during groggy nights— things that he didn’t write down or store into memory. The truth was, Tricia was a brilliant mistake. The day he’d walked in and saw her dancing was the day he realized this. Androids didn’t do that; they didn’t crave learning like human beings did, and they didn’t get upset when their masters spent more time with their girlfriends than them. Sometime during the hacking of her A.I. and the installation of foreign parts into her frame, he had found true intelligence. He could pretend that he had the means to do it all over again, but he would need a new Mika to break his heart, several drugs to keep him awake for days, and the luck he’d had when she came to life.
    “Let’s go to Celia’s tonight to celebrate!” Priscilla said as she rested her head on his shoulder.
    He could hear the happiness in her voice, and it was because he had committed to her. The fact that he couldn’t afford Celia’s Steakhouse didn’t matter to him. He had to find a way to afford it. How sobering would it be for him to remind her how poor he was when she had just become his girl? The situation depressed him, but it wasn’t enough to interfere with the pride he felt in having a girl—a very special girl—as his girlfriend.
    As if she was reading his mind, Priscilla whispered into his ear, “It’s