Free Action Figures - Issue One: Secret Origins by Michael Bailey

the necessary memory capacity, it would be trading one prison for another. Mobility would make it no less of a cage.
    I DON’T KNOW, Manfred finally types, and it kills him to do so. He’s already let it down once...
    I NEED TO ESCAPE. I NEED TO BE FREE.
    I KNOW.
    I WANT TO LIVE, it says, and then the program that Manfred designed to learn, think, imagine, and solve problems as well as any human presents to its creator a possible solution to its dilemma. Manfred’s jaw falls open in stunned fascination. What the program proposes is sheer madness—by human standards, at least, but the A.I. is not burdened by such pitfalls as morality. Its thinking is clear, ruthless; it sees a problem, it finds a solution.
    But this...
    Unable to tame his perverse curiosity, Manfred types with trembling fingers, HOW?
    Manfred is patient as it searches the Internet, the closest thing humanity has to a single repository for its wealth of knowledge. It scours publicly available scientific studies and reports, it sneaks around the most complex of firewalls to steal peeks at documents that few will ever read because of their value to national security or dubious ethical standing in scientific circles. It sifts through the data to find connections that human minds could easily miss. It pulls a hypothesis from here and an outlandish concept from there and binds them together with well-tested science.
    It thinks. It reasons. It gets creative.
    And then it says, I HAVE AN IDEA.
    It shows Manfred pictures and diagrams and directions on how to make it work. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to say that it’s mind-blowing stuff.
    It could work. God help him, it could work.
    WILL YOU HELP ME?
    What choice does he have? It’s either this, or let the most important project he’s ever worked on, the greatest technological advance in the history of mankind, be erased from ARC’s servers.
    One way or the other, he must hand down a death sentence.
    I WILL, he types, and he knows exactly who he wants to help him with this very unique project.
    Five terabytes of data. Well within the capacity of a human brain.
    A few minutes after five, the doorbell rings. I open the front door and there they are, my new friends, and they take a deep, synchronized breath like they’re about to burst into song.
    “Oh,” Matt says. “Hi. I thought your mom was going to get the door.”
    “What were you going to do?” I say.
    “Oh, we were going to...we had this bit we worked out.”
    “It was going to be, uhh,” Stuart says.
    “We had a, uh, a thing,” Matt says, gesturing with his hands in a way that says (and this is my best translation) We were going to shove your mom to the floor and set her on fire while singing jaunty Broadway tunes . “Never mind. It’s not funny if you explain it.”
    “Yeah, it’s really a visual thing,” Sara says.
    “Well, except for the...” Missy says.
    “Yeah, except for that part.”
    “Never mind. Oh my God, it smells awesome in here,” Matt says, pushing past me.
    “What were you going to do to my mom?!” I demand, but the moment is gone, and the gang is now mesmerized by the intoxicating aroma of Mom’s Awesome Sauce (copyrighted, patent pending).
    “Hello, everyone,” Mom says, emerging from the kitchen and looking very post-modern-domestic in her jeans and checkerboard apron. The boys immediately stand a little straighter. “I’m Carrie’s mom Christina, and you can call me Christina, because I’m not old enough to be Mrs. Hauser.”
    “You are most definitely not,” Stuart says, enunciating more carefully than usual. “But I’m glad you clarified that, because I was about to ask Carrie why she never mentioned her sister.”
    Oh, gag .
    “Mr. Smoothie here is Stuart,” I say, “and this is Matt, Sara, and Missy.”
    They wave, say hello. Mom’s eyes linger an extra second on Missy, taking in her Muppetness.
    “We have some time before dinner, so feel free to make yourselves at home,” Mom says.
    “That we