During those rare brief windows of time where Jak wasn’t needed by Harry or Shannon to perform a particular task, he found that one of his favourite hobbies, strange enough for an android, perhaps, was reading. He would sit at the round table in the laboratory break room and leaf through a dusty old hardback from Stephan’s collection. Somehow, reading these books brought him closer to Stephan. He enjoyed the quiet that this activity entailed, and the mental stimulation, and he wondered if during his simulation conditioning, he would have enjoyed reading this much as well. What genres did he like? What topics interested him? Sounds, like the electric buzzing of the fridge or the steady drip of the coffee percolator, the patter of footsteps outside, all of it faded away as Jak was drawn into the pages of this book.
“Jak?” Shannon quietly announced herself. When he didn’t respond she leaned close to him with her hands on her knees and tried again. “Jak!”
He blinked at looked up, startled.
“You can hear a person’s heartbeat from across a room but you can’t tell I’m standing right next to you?” she remarked.
“I have to actively listen for a heartbeat. I was focusing on something else.”
Shannon glanced over his shoulder. “What are you reading?”
Jak closed the book to reveal the cover page.
“Baudrillard,” Shannon read aloud. “Right. I hope nothing is coming back?”
“No,” Jak answered quickly. “Well, not so much memories, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Shannon walked past him and opened the fridge. “You want a beer?”
“Are you sure you don’t want to save it for you and Harry, or any human for that matter?”
She grabbed two and set them down on the table. “Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it.”
“It used to matter.” The drink fizzed when Jak popped off the cap. “I don’t remember what happened before—which is good,” he quickly added. “I just get feelings, sensation, like déjà vu.”
“What happened before wasn’t real. There’s a reason why you shouldn’t try to remember.”
“The person I was…”
“Our past doesn’t define who we are, only our choices. You are Jak because you choose to be. Isn’t that enough?” Shannon folded her hands under her chin and leaned forward. “What’s bothering you?”
Jak held his beer with both hands and stared at it. For the first time he didn’t quite know how to say what he needed to say, and it wasn’t a problem with his linguistic circuits. Thoughts of the android being abused at the mall found their way into his mind.
“There is so much hate in the world,” he said, slowly and quietly. “I always knew it was there, I’m not naïve, but I only ever saw it as an observer from a computer terminal. Discontent breeds discontent. Violence breeds violence. We struggle for survival, to preserve not only ourselves but those things that we value at the cost of so many others, and it goes on and on since the very beginning.”
“We?” said Shannon.
“I’m not human, but I am a part of this equation. This can’t simply just be the way of things. In order for GAIA to work the human race must reach an understanding. But there’s too much anger, too many miscommunications. I never understood until I felt it directed at me—at my kind. Every problem has to have a solution. How do we reach an understanding when there are bad people in the world, like the one who attacked us at the mall?”
“You and I are different, but we’re not that different,” said Shannon. “And try not to think of things in terms of good and bad people. Sometimes—”
“There are just people, who bad things have happened to.”
Shannon smiled. “He told you that too.”
“Does that really excuse them?” Jak asked.
He was thinking about Kari. What would he do if someone attacked her the way they did that android in the mall? How would he react? Could he ever forgive someone like that? He wondered how he had strayed so far from his intended path—to be a conscience for GAIA.
Shannon thought for a moment. “You know what, I don’t think it does. But I truly believe that everyone can change, so long as they’re given a choice.”
“What choice?”
“To do the right thing.”
Jak felt his mood lift. “I could have read that in a book.”
Shannon leaned back. “Could you now?”
“You and I aren’t different, but we’re not the same, either.”
“You’re right. You’re something more.”
“Yeah, you keep saying that.”
Shannon held her drink with both hands and her eyes looked directly at Jak. “You feel alone, even around the people you care about. I understand, Jak.”
Jak looked up and narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think you do.”
“Do you know what I see when I look at you?”
“What?”
“A friend.”
Just then a heavy booming sound erupted from some distant corner of the laboratory. The ground vibrated beneath their feet and the walls shuddered.
“What the hell was that?” Shannon stood up and looked around.
“I don’t know,” Jak replied.
His phone rang and when he answered and put it on speaker, he heard Chris’ voice.
“Uh, guys, there are a bunch of dudes in swat uniforms knocking on our door.”
“What do they want?” Shannon asked.
“Hold up, let me just ask them real quick.”
“Okay, smart ass—”
Another echoing boom shot through the building.
“Oh shit, they just blasted the door down, this is serious.”
Jak stood up and moved to the nearest computer where he could access the lab’s security camera feed. There he pulled up on the screen a live recording showing the main entrance to the Khaganate Labs compound. A black SUV was parked not far off, and about half a dozen men and women, armoured and geared with tactical rifles, were in position just outside. Shannon peered over Jak’s shoulder.
“It can’t be…”
“Who are they? What are they after?” Jak asked.
Shannon pushed herself away. “Okay, I have a hunch. You need to get out of here. It’s you that they’re after.”
“What about Chris?”
“I’ll be fine,” Chris called. “I’m outside, no one has seen me. I’ll just leave.”
“I’ll find Harry,” said Shannon, rushing to the exit. “You just get somewhere safe.”
“What do they want with me?”
“What they want is GAIA. Listen, I can’t explain everything right now. Go!”
Just like that Shannon was gone and a million thoughts were running through Jak’s mind, pieces of data constantly being assessed and prioritised. At the very top of the list was Kari. Jak needed to find her and make sure that she was safe. If this was an attack on Khaganate Labs then the assailants would probably go after the company’s assets, which included Kari.
His phone rang.
“Jak, where are you?” said Harry, uncharacteristically flustered.
“I’m leaving the lab.”
“This is a nightmare. I thought this might happen but I never expected them to go so far.”
“What do they want from us?”
“I don’t have time to explain. I don’t know what’s going to happen but I do know they’re going to arrest us. I know what you’re thinking, Jak. For the love of God, don’t come after us. Go to Kakushin. Find Rhianna Price. She frequents a nightclub called Silver Palace. You’ll know what to do. Oh, and be careful of Myles. Don’t trust anyone, do you understand? Okay, I have to go.”
Jak turned away from the path, vaulted the hedge and cut through the garden, regretting that he couldn’t take in the garden’s beauty one last time. He stopped, listened for heartbeats, for heat signatures, for Wi-Fi signals. He ducked and hid from a group of invaders who were carrying pieces of equipment and leading androids into a van. The air became quieter the further he moved from the main entrance and he quickly circled the compound looking for a safe way inside.
Kari stood inside by the window, her blonde hair shining in the sunlight, and from where Jak stood on the far side of the garden, he thought he heard her singing. A tall man in a black security uniform paced slowly over the sleek garden bridge. Jak remained hidden behind the hedges and peered up, switching to a double lens and getting a good look at the trooper’s kit—nightstick, taser, Glock semi-automatic. Jak wondered how serious the situation had become. Were these people recalling Harry’s androids… or destroying them? The answer to that question would mean the difference between a disabling shock and a bullet to the brain. Being shocked wouldn’t actually hurt Jak, and so he hoped for the former.
He closed his eyes and grasped mentally outwards, towards Kari, her signature. There was once a time when he existed only as part of a network, an ambient thing, a piece of the internet caged in the confines of a single space which he was tasked to oversee. GAIA. Preserving the world. How on Earth would he fulfil his function now? Was it even his directive anymore, or was it time to select a new path? The digital world weaved itself together like strands of Wi-Fi. Being able to visualise and connect to those strands was a skill that all androids had, however for a mind as cluttered as Jak’s it took a certain level of skill to perform. This was the first time he had pulled it off so perfectly, and he used it to tap into the invaders radio frequency.
“Is that everything?” he heard a voice say.
“Valentino’s lab is clear,” someone reported.
“Murphy’s lab is clear as well,” said someone else.
“What about the east wing? Project… K4-R1?”
“Standby…”
Jak listened and waited for an agonising thirty seconds.
“Project is deemed dangerous. You are instructed to apprehend.”
“No!” Jak yelled.
He planned on buying Kari time but was yet to calculate what this would mean for him. Every scenario, every variable, required him to act as a distraction, to make a scene. He closed his eyes and reached out to her.
“Kari, you have to get out of there. I’ll buy you some time.”
Kari had disappeared from the window and a cold ache welled in Jak’s chest, as if his core regulator had shut down. This was it, fear, and it was bitter and cold. The following seconds dragged on ceaselessly. Jak listened to the beating hearts of the security troopers approaching him, their soft footfalls, the quick inhale and exhale of their lungs, the trickle of the fountain nearby.
“Thank you,” Kari replied softly.
Jak raised his hands and walked slowly towards the troopers. They too possessed fragments of fear in their hunched shoulders and raised eyelids, and Jak wondered what gave them the right to be afraid of him. They hovered their hands over their tasers, and Jak relaxed knowing now that they were not under orders to kill.
“I’ve done nothing wrong,” he told them calmly. “But I think I understand why you’re here.”
“Stay right there,” the trooper commanded.
“This is just a misunderstanding,” said Jak, still edging his way forward.
“I said don’t move. That’s an order.”
Jak shook his head. “I don’t follow orders. But I’d like to know what yours are, if you don’t mind.”
One more step forward.
“It’s not obeying,” the trooper said into his radio.
The two other voices buzzed through the radio in quick succession, saying: “K4-R1 is hostile!” and then “Subdue! Subdue!”
Jak was on the two troopers in a heartbeat, ducking out of the path of the taser strands and knocking the closest man to the ground. This was the first time Jak had ever harmed a human being, a strict violation of his programming. A moment’s hesitation was all it took for the second trooper to drive an electrified baton into the small of Jak’s back. He jolted with pain, his nano-tissue and biocomponents enflamed all at once, and one by one in quick succession his systems went haywire, like violent static roaring through his brain. His arms seized up. His legs turned to jelly and he toppled awkwardly onto his side, hitting the ground with a hard thud.
“Kari…” he tried, “can you hear…?”
It was no use. Even if he could produce a tangible thought before his systems became fried, he would never get a response. He was done for. But then, to his surprise, the pain and the electrical current suddenly disappeared. The cloud of white noise was lifted, Jak sat up to see the two troopers laying face-down on the ground, and standing over them was Kari holding the baton.
“I hope they’re unconscious,” she nervously remarked.
Jak experienced a mixture of admiration and astonishment amidst his grogginess, which quickly wore off at the sound of more invaders fast approaching. He stood up and took Kari’s hand.
“Never mind them. We need to leave.”
He took a few steps forward but Kari pulled him back, saying, “Wait, we can’t go without Harry and Shannon.”
“I was told not to go after them,” he told her, although every fibre of his being desired it.
“Well, I wasn’t told anything,” Kari replied.
Her logic was flawless. Jak smiled. “Okay, let’s go.”
They began moving again though the campus, weaving around Tokyo Robotica troopers, staying agile to avoid being caught.
“How do we find them?” Kari whispered.
“I honestly don’t know. I hoped you had a plan.”
“Not really,” Kari admitted.
Just then they turned a corner and witnessed the bulk of the enemy forces, and at the head of them stood a woman, tall, in a dark suit and with long dark hair. She directed the troops with firm orders and hand signals. One of the troops dragged Harry through a doorway and pinned him to the ground.
“Cuff him,” the woman said. “Find the girl.”
“No!” Jak shouted.
He still didn’t have a plan. It was one of those rare moments where simple logic meant nothing to him, as if only his desire mattered, and he had faith in something he did not fully understand. It was a faith that somehow, he would stop Harry from being harmed. He didn’t know how he was going to accomplish this goal, simply that he must. The woman looked at Jak with shadowy eyes and pointed, and a storm of weapon bore down upon him and Kari. He recalled a loud noise and a fierce tension ripping through his body, followed by a long but temporary blackness.
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