Like a Fox on the Run, стр. 18
James took a shine to Thomas the moment he was accepted into the Trainee Program. Maybe the scrappy teen reminded him of himself in some way. Maybe he saw the potential in Tiger. After all, he would go on to be one of the best, if not the best, pilots to come out of the Redstone Lodge. Maybe he just simply liked a young man who still said “sir” and “ma’am” and saw things in terms of good and evil, black and white, and was quick to stand for what was right. After all, there wasn’t a whole lot of that left in this day and age.
More than anything else, Tiger was exactly the kind of kid James needed to prove it didn’t take a Ph.D. to fly a spaceship. He was bright, intelligent, willing to learn, physically fit, mentally tough, and above all else, courageous. In James’ mind, there was more a need for hundreds of young people like him than there was the highly selective and expensive pitifully few astronauts of NASA.
“It’s not rocket science,” he used to say. “It’s just rocket flyin’. That’s all. Blastin’ off, flyin’ to your destination, then comin’ back, landin’ safely and doin’ it all over again. It shouldn’t be that hard. It can’t be that hard! Not if we’re ever really gonna do this! We need asses in seats. Lots of asses. Lots of seats.”
In the end, he was right. NASA and other government and commercial space entities would grudgingly have to shed its elitist ways in order to fulfill their own ambitious mandates.
Tiger stood out in front of the old inn and felt a sense of despair wash over him as the memories faded now like the tide rolling out. What an injustice! This old building should be a museum or on the Historical Register. At the very least, it should have one of those digital signs out front telling about the history that had been made here. But that was never going to happen now, not after Weird Wednesday. He looked up at the old forlorn Charger and felt as if it was symbolic of his life now. Past its prime, underappreciated, and left behind.
I know how ya feel, old girl!
***
Inside, he checked himself in for three nights. There was a young girl working the front desk … only she wasn’t a girl. Rock-bounders might have been fooled, but he instantly spotted the faintest trace of the lines on the back of her hand, the last remnants of the skin graft that now covered her UPC code.
Immediately, bittersweet memories rushed to his head. Memories of cherished moments and precious times with maybe the only woman who’d ever understood him.
Madison! Sweet Madison! He quickly pushed them back down, as they were fast becoming painful recollections of regret and self-loathing.
The “girl” was an Andi, an obsolete pleasure model smuggled earthside by black market traders. They had been out of production almost ten years now, but the ones still around remained in high demand. Being the first fully sentient androids ever produced for human “coupling,” they had been marketed to lonely spacers during the heyday of the Rush. Because they had never been available for purchase on Earth, they’d become something of a novelty item rockside down through the years. They were sold to wealthy collectors who simply wanted what was forbidden to them; to prove they were above all laws. On a darker note, they were also sold to illicit brothels, white slavery rings, or just simply, individuals who wanted a compliant and obedient playmate, or who wanted a beautiful woman on their arm to impress others. Men who were older and craved the feel of young flesh again, even if it was silicon based. Businessmen who needed to make a good showing were also popular buyers. Why take the fading wife out and have to find a babysitter when you’ve got one of these ageless beauties walking around a corporate function with you? And of course, there were even sold to places such as this, to work as free labor.
Their official model name had been the Andrea DLX. They were easily recognizable by their non-natural hair colors: purple, orange, green, etc. Likewise, their eyes were also shaded in similar colors. There was a very legitimate reason they were made to look like schoolgirls from a Japanese anime film, and in spite of the misconceptions and popular beliefs, it had little to do with plaid skirts and cartoon fetishes. It did, however, have everything to do with making them easy to spot.
Robots were built strictly for function. Their faces showed no emotions, that is, if they even had faces. Many times, they were just simply blank plastic plates. They were never meant to mimic a human’s features or intimacies, only their work. Thus, they were easily recognizable.
Androids, on the other hand were a completely different matter. With their LykeMynded software programming, they quickly developed personalities that best suited those of their buyers. Once they became fully acclimated to their surroundings, the only way to identify them as synthetic beings were the physical oddities mandated by law, the Day-Glo hair, the bar code tattoo, the USB port located at the base of the spine … Even so, they were still strictly banned from Earth; they were only allowed in space beyond LOE. To be caught in possession of one inside the atmosphere carried harsh sentences of up to thirty years for each offense in Penal One, the supermax deep-space prison past Jupiter, considered the Alcatraz of Sol. All due to a science fiction-inspired paranoia … the fear that machines that looked too human could one day pass themselves off as human, infiltrating and then rising up to