| Part One Michael finally put down the telephone and turned to stare out of the glass frontage of the barn conversion. The rain was pouring, thunder rumbling across the sky, sharp forks of lightening slicing the darkness in halves, quarters, eighths. But it wasn't the storm that caught his attention. It was his partner, his lover, standing out in the gravelled driveway, soaked to the synthesised skin, white shirt plastered to his shoulders, back, arms and chest, blue jeans dark and clinging. Water droplets fell from his hair, face tipped up into the rain. It was dangerous for Kitt to be out like that in an electrical storm, but he wanted to be there and Michael wasn't going to stop him. Their lives were dangerous day in, day out. If Kitt wanted to feel the rain on his man-made skin with his computer sensor nerves and data collection programmes, so be it. There were so many differences between the android and a real human body. Kitt looked human on the surface but he wasn't, and sometimes Michael overlooked that fact, even if he never quite forgot it. Those whisky brown eyes looked just slightly too glassy, his hair slightly too silky. He had tear ducts because the moisture washed the sensitive, exceptionally expensive optics when they got dirty or dusty. But he didn't eat or drink, had no digestive system. He had a heart, a metal pump that kept the lubricating fluids running around the complex robotics, and it had a beat much like Michael's, only slower at rest. His head was a CPU - a core processor in the most complex neural network in the world - protected by a shell bullets couldn't penetrate. His skeletal structure could be and had been run over by a 4x4 with only minor damage. He was unique in every way. And Michael was very, very much in love with him. The phone rang again, distracting him, and he moved around to pick it up. "Devon, we agreed I'd be over in the morning�" he turned back to continue drinking in the sight of his gorgeous partner in the rain. And saw him drop as if someone had shut him down. //"Kitt?!"// He dropped the receiver, ran across the polished wooden floor and pushed open the doors to the outside, out into the wet, dropping to a crouch where Kitt had collapsed into the gravel. "Kitt?" Sweeping his hair back from his lover's blank, expressionless face, Michael placed his hand over the heart and felt it beating hard and slow. In the back of his mind, Kitt was still there but he was distant, distracted, as if keeping the android body functioning was something he didn't have the resources to do. Sliding his hands under Kitt's armpits, Michael half-lifted, half-hauled his partner's inert body back into the house, out of the rain, apologising through the implant as he scraped the heels of his partner's bare feet across the tiny stones. As soon as he was inside he took his cell phone from the coffee table and called a number he'd long ago memorised. On the landline, Devon was forgotten. As soon as the call was connected he spoke, "Nick? Has anything happened to Karr?" MacKenzie's voice came over loud and clear. "Such as?" "Kitt's just collapsed. The link's still functioning but it's distant, like he's� busy." "Hang on." Michael guessed Karr had blocks in place as he and Nick had been working. Now, presumably, the blocks were being torn down. Suddenly he heard, "Michael, Kitt's under attack!" The panic was clear in Nick's voice. "Karr's going in to help him, but you have to shut down external communication links from the android." "How the hell do I do that?" A pause. "Reboot him." "What?!" "Reboot! The switch, to the left of his windpipe. Press it hard." "Nick� I can't! I can't� shut him down! I won't!" "You're not shutting him down! You're rebooting his systems. The CPU won't drop; you'll feel that it doesn't. Please, Michael!" Nick's voice was wavering and Michael could hear Karr's voice in the background, issuing commands, giving status reports. "Michael!" "All right. All right." Reaching out, Michael sought Kitt's windpipe with his fingers, pressing hard in a way that would have been painful for a human being, but Kitt didn't even react. He sought the hard, flat nub of the reboot switch and pushed on it. One - two - three - four - five� Kitt opened his eyes. "Block all external communications outputs," was the first thing Michael said, "just leave the two links." A quick nod indicated Kitt had done as he'd asked. "Are you okay?" "I think so�. Thank you." "Michael?" That was Nick. "It's done. Kitt's back." "Rendezvous at the warehouse. Looks like we have a new problem." "Fifteen minutes." Ending the call, he helped Kitt to his feet. "What happened?" "Something� was in my CPU, trying to shut down systems and functions." He looked pale, shaken, and although Michael knew in his head - it was simply because Kitt had been re-routing energy away from the non-critical functions that made him appear human - it didn't stop him from sliding his arm around his partner's waist, steadying him. "How the hell did it get access?" "I don't know. I'm re-writing security protocols at the moment, changing access codes and encryption. Karr's doing the same, just in case. It seemed to be everywhere. It was all I could do to keep it from the links." Michael could feel a myriad muted emotions through the implant and touched Kitt, offering his own strength to bolster that of his partner. "Are you okay to go?" Michael drove, leaving Kitt to talk to his brother silently about what had happened, what they'd both witnessed. For so long it had been so strange to drive the car and not chat along with it. Once or twice he'd started up a conversation with the dashboard only to have Kitt answer him from the passenger seat. He'd had it re-sprayed back to the basic black and the scanner remained in the nose of the car; Kitt activated it sometimes remotely, when he thought Michael needed to see it. It always made him feel safe, loved, like he truly belonged somewhere. Wherever the car was. That his partner understood that really touched him. He waited for Kitt to shift in his seat, a signal that his conversation with Karr was over for now, and glanced at him. "I'm sorry I had to reboot you." Glassy brown eyes looked back at him with surprise and tender understanding. "You might just have saved my life, don't apologise. You might need to do it again." He shook his head once. "Nick told me to do it. I didn't want to." He felt Kitt's hand cover his hand on the steering wheel, Kitt's warmth at the back of his mind. "It just reboots periphery systems, shuts down external comms� you could still feel me." "Yeah. Still. I don't like doing that. Did it too many times in the early days." He felt the hug from his partner and returned it. "Ordering you to shut yourself down, doing it myself, watching the scanner go black�. Not a good feeling then. Definitely not a great feeling now." "It is different, I promise you. But I'm still a computer, Michael." "Don't say that�." "It's what I am!" "No, it isn't. Don't put yourself down. You're an Artificial Intelligence in a bio-android." He met Kitt's smile. "One in around six-point-five billion, isn't it?" "One in six-point-four billion, nine hundred and ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine." The cool hand slipped from his own. "Or maybe ninety-eight." The one was Karr. The second� "Kitt?" "I don't know for sure. But do you remember the AI I said I saw in the King Military network?" It was a few years ago now but Michael nodded. "The one that assaulted me� felt the same." |