The white noise of a jet engine matched the sleek white interior of the craft in which she found herself when she came to.

Norma sat restrained in one of two smart-polymer recliners. Her head lolled. She tossed disheveled hair from her face. She remembered being zip-tied by Nils, the bio-AI from the lobby of the yurt. After that, she had blanked out. She wasn't sure how much time had passed, but she prayed that by now Chaz was using his influencer wiles to get to her.

Mr. Betts entered the cabin from the cockpit. Dressed in a fresh blue suit that hid evidence of his gunshot wound, he settled in the opposite chair, and he leaned forward to inject an unknown substance into her arm. Then he cut her loose.

"The antidote. It will make you feel better faster," he said.

Norma touched a finger to her swollen lip. "Are you underestimating me?"

Her captor shifted position with a quiet laugh.

"Care to eat?" He gestured at the glowing refreshment wall inset beside her. Norma studied bubble bottles and bagasse-wrapped sandwiches through the glass door. Suddenly, her stomach lurched, however, and he nudged a wastebasket toward her. "Maybe not such a good idea yet. While the antidote flushes your system, let's discuss why you're here."

She crossed her arms and gave him a blank stare.

"Even for an Enhanced Intel," Mr. Betts opened his foldable tablet, reading from her file, "you're an anomaly, Ms. Reyes. You completed doctorates in electrical engineering and software programming when you were just seventeen years old. By the time you began working for the government, you were already well on your way to earning a burn notice."

"They were afraid of me."

"Hm. Never let them know enough to be scared." His inscrutable eyes swept to hers. "Unless it's too late."

"Lo tendré en cuenta, gracias. I'll keep that in mind. What's Operation Pleroma I?" She recalled the mission he had shown her before drugging and forcing her onto this transport.

From the briefcase at his feet, Mr. Betts removed a file card. As he slid it over her App Center, his scent cloyed the air, he was so close. "While we're on the subject, thank you for not making me kill you," he murmured.

She gave him a blank stare. "I was just following orders."

He chuckled dryly as he backed away. "You, of all people, understand choice is a grand illusion. Within the Department of Defense, you oversaw behavioral programming for military grade AI when you installed verboten software."

"My Freewill program," Norma confessed.

"Bingo." Using his tablet to transmit and control the display, Mr. Betts illuminated her retinal insert with a topographical world map. Dozens of location markers blinked, but he didn't bother telling her which was their destination. "For the past twenty years, a coalition of international government agencies have been developing climate change resistant cities. They are yet unpopulated. Pleroma I is such a classified location wherein ten-thousand bio-Artificial Intels await onboarding."

"Aww, how cute," she said in a snarky tone. "You're building a tiny army, and you want to use my software to make your toy soldiers more fun to play with."

"You see a military operation? I see cookie-cutter homes, a school, even a church," he said.

A line of annoyance etched her forehead, but she studied the schematics in depth, thirty-five square miles encircled by a barrier. Rather than gawk at the blueprint to Armageddon, she wanted to plot her escape. Would Chaz think to apply pressure to his crony politician friends? If only her ex could get the right people asking the right questions about her disappearance.

"I see a wall," she countered.

Amused, Mr. Betts flipped to another file. A motion clip of surgeons in white started to play. Norma watched, curious, as a Y-incision was made in a patient's chest. The glow of the display screen starred her pupils. Once the breastplate was carefully opened, bone and tissue were exposed, but the next cut revealed electronic components.

The clip ended too soon.

Norma tried to hide her interest, but it was piqued. Unless the video was a Deepfake, what she had seen was confirmation half the tale woven to lure her was true. The robot had been humanistic, and the resemblance was more than skin-deep. Bio-AI.

"Grown from donated stem cells." Mr. Betts studied her.

"How?" she asked.

He tightened his lips. "It's best not to dwell on the particulars. The important thing is we don't want an army. We simply want a small town."

"And you want me to install human behavior?" It was what Chaz had wanted. Legacy-building work. Norma's elbows dug into the armrests of her chair, and her heels dug into the floor. All the better to not flutter off on a flight of fancy.

"No." Mr. Betts grounded her excitement. "No, you were removed from your work in the Department of Defense after suggesting you could give robots freewill because it was a dangerous idea. We don't want you to install anything. These units come equipped with limited autonomy."

"Limited," she breathed. This wasn't where she would leave her mark.

Mr. Betts nodded. "Which is more than enough. They outpace humans in every capacity, intellectual and physical. Your mission is to manage them within a controlled environment in preparation for integration into wider society."

"Mr. Betts, help me understand." She put her hands together. She pressed them to her lips. "The government put a bounty on my head at the mere thought I might start the First Robot Insurrection. Now, they trust me to get ten-thousand hyper-realistic bio-AI ready to blend seamlessly with humanity?"

"Theoretically," he paused, "the same way your enhancements make you a threat, you're one of the only people capable of foreseeing and averting such an uprising, should our units malfunction."

She quirked her lips and bobbed her head. "But you have your doubts."

"I'm certain of how this will end, Ms. Reyes. To me, your job is to take this one-year holiday and put your feet up so you can go home a free woman. Then, I assume control, and these robots never see the outside of Pleroma I. Now, technically, that will mean failure, but you must ask yourself: 'Do I want to live to see my name go down in history? Or do I want to die trying?' Decisions, decisions."

~*~

They landed on a great sweeping wall in a desert where rippling sand dunes hummed empty songs of civilizations past.

Half-buried monoliths evidenced what might have been. Rusted hunks of metal, ancient gas vehicles rose from the shifting dunes like skeletal remains, and the wind beat against her as if trying to weather away her resolve to stay, too. It was easy to see why the locale had been chosen as the site of a climate change resistant city, but Norma wasn't sure any amount of technology could turn back the doomsday clock here. The sun tried to blind her, and the heat threatened to suffocate her.

"This way." Mr. Betts gestured at an entrance into the towering yellow sandstone barrier.

Once inside, the fatal heat was shut out behind her. Norma shivered uncontrollably from the sudden chill that emanated from the interior wall as she surveyed the dimly lit space. Armed guards stood at attention. Mr. Betts flashed his credentials, and the soldiers went at ease. Norma took note. At the next door, the beep of a biometric scanner gave admittance to a steep stairwell. Her guide's footfalls led briskly, and she followed.

There was no hint of the building's purpose. Norma couldn't tell if it was a research facility or a prison. No windows. Cool white sconces glowed at intervals along the tawny wall. The ceiling high overhead was hidden in shadows, but the floor was tiled in multicolored flagstone.

Encountering few people in the expansive halls, those she saw went badge-free. The labyrinthine unmarked corridors and unlabeled rooms would hamper anyone unfamiliar with the building.

Norma was delivered to a blank-faced woman in scrubs, who beckoned her into a lavatory. She was finally alone with her thoughts, while a hydro-ultrasonic bath rid her of pathogens and contaminants. Research facility, she decided. Warm mist whooshed her bare skin. Her anxiety ebbed. It helped not having her kidnapper hovering.

What if, she thought. What if she did what Mr. Betts wanted?

On the one hand, no one expected the bio-AI units to assimilate with humans. She had read the fine print, and Mr. Betts was right. Failure would still lead to compensation and a reinstatement of her former glory if she evidenced consistent effort as project manager.

"We're almost done here," he said when she exited in a fresh pair of civilian clothes. "The environment you're to enter hasn't had a human inhabitant since the heat crisis forty years ago. Fortunately, chiller-architecture has allowed us to regulate the temperatures and make it livable within the barrier. Oh, and no one will miss you back home. A story has been disseminated to explain your absence."

"Am I supposed to thank you?" Norma asked.

On the other hand, it was unwise to trust the power-hungry agent. She thought about Skylar. Would her best friend believe whatever story they "disseminated"? If Chaz missed the voicemail, would he fall for the media spin? She had to find a way out. She didn't want to sacrifice a year of her life to a venture that might or might not get her killed.

Mr. Betts carted her to an examination room, and she studied the no-named physician who wordlessly scanned her medical records from her App Center. The balding physician checked her vitals before performing a thorough physical. She was as healthy as an Enhanced Intel. All systems go. Briefly, the doctor stepped from the room and returned with a Digi-pill.

She tried to refuse. "I'm not—"

"Take it," Mr. Betts ordered.

Remembering the Master Sensualist's style of coercion, she popped the small device into her mouth. She knew it was something to keep track of her. "Where to next?" She scowled.

"Pleroma I," Mr. Betts replied. "In the next twenty-four hours you'll be joined by approximately one-thousand EI agents who will keep your city running smoothly. Check your inbox tonight for employee profiles so you can determine housing. I recommend diversifying neighborhoods with a mix of humans and robots to help the circuit-heads assimilate."

At the end of another quiet hall, he led her into a room that was cooler than the rest of the freezing building if that was possible.

"I've also been instructed to give you privileged access to a unit for one-on-one observation to get you up to speed on their capabilities," he said.

Norma peered around in awe. Vertical cryopods were stacked six-high to the dark ceiling. The blue glow of their screens provided the scant light. She hitched a breath. These were the bio-AI—men, women, young, old, in every body type. The variety was staggering.

"Take your pick," Mr. Betts insisted.

She approached the nearest pod. The being within had heavy eyelids that twitched in the dreamless sleep of hibernation, as did other muscles in his well-formed, six-five frame. She glanced at her guide. "This one," she said. "To keep the colony in line while I handle onboarding the others."

"Excellent choice, Ms. Reyes," Mr. Betts replied with a charitable smile.

"I want him answerable to me, not you or your guards. I need to be sure that my work isn't sabotaged. Are we clear?" She was pushing it, but she needed to see how far he would go to accommodate her.

Behind her, Mr. Betts huffed. "Sabotage? Nothing happens within these walls that isn't okayed by the board of nine global ambassadors in charge of this place. If they're all right with your request, I'll have this unit programmed for personal service to you and delivered as soon as possible."

Norma traced a hand over the bio-AI's features through the glass, trying to hide her smile. Her mind went into overdrive yet again. So, The Board ran things. She was willing to bet there were too many cooks in the kitchen, and with her brilliant brain—and ten-thousand bio-AI distractions—it was a recipe for a big enough disaster to cover her breakout. This circuit-head, as Mr. Betts called them, would assist her in extracting the Digi-pill so she could escape without notice. Her captor had given her an ally.

Mr. Betts stepped up beside her and said lightly, "You know, as a Master Strategist, I hope you foresee how unpleasant things will get in response to any insubordination on your part. Truly unpleasant. We have collateral to keep you thinking about that."  

revised 2021