Bitstream

10.1

July 2047

It wasn't easy for a single father to balance the nature of computational science with the reality of raising an only child, but Viren did what he could, and little Rhea Steele loved him very much for that.

It was just like any other day. He'd been trying to get that damn robot to move, and Rhea loved to help, even if she wasn't entirely sure what it was they were doing. She was twelve years old, after all. What on Earth would a kid like her know about AI algorithms? Still, she'd strapped on her gloves, the thick ones with the rubber grip pads, and was doing her best to pretend she was contributing: handing her father tools when he asked, standing on tiptoe to read the blinking lines on the terminal, nodding along as if it all made sense.

The downstairs lab was cramped and particularly grey. Not in any purposeful, industrial kind of way, but in that lived-in-too-long kind of way. The walls had once been painted white, but years of smoke, heat, and grinding metal had worn them down to a dull, uneven film. Wires curled from the ceiling. The floors were rough concrete covered with scorched spots from past misfires. Three repurposed server towers hummed along the far wall, patched together with plastic housings, tape, and handwritten labels. There was a smell, too. Not a bad one, just permanent: rust, burnt solder, stale coffee, and ozone. In a way, it smelled like her dad.

In the corner of the lab, hooked up to the power rail and half-draped in a silver tarp, sat the android. The prototype. Project Halcyon, her father had called it, though he sometimes referred to it more affectionately – her. It didn't have a name yet. Didn't have a face, either, only a smoothed-over skullplate, one single optic installed in the right socket, and a slack jaw that had never spoken a word. Its frame was skeletal and too long in the arms, with one forearm still unskinned and cables hanging from the elbow joint. It didn't move much. Not when Viren was around. Sometimes, when he was out of the room, Rhea thought she could hear a faint static hum rise and fall; the thing was breathing.

Her father said it was harmless. That it wasn't even "on", just cycling baseline routines. But every once in a while, when Rhea walked too close, she'd catch its optic flicker. Not at anything in particular – just flicker, because it saw something behind her that she didn't.

Viren walked over to the computer terminal and began typing away. "Just stand back a little," he said, fixing his glasses. "I don't think it quite has the thinking power to pull an arm off, but it's better to be safe than sorry."

Rhea did just that, and boy did she have no problem doing it. The robot gave her the creeps. "It keeps twitching when you're not looking."

Viren chuckled under his breath. "That's just the muscle relays recalibrating. Phantom responses. It's not conscious."

"It looks conscious," she muttered, watching the optic as it dimmed and brightened.

He glanced over at her. "You're assigning intent to behaviour. That's human, not machine."

Rhea frowned. "So what happens when it does get intent?"

Viren paused, hands hovering over the keyboard. "Well," he said, voice quieter now, "that's what I'm trying to figure out. What the investors want me to figure out." Then, with a single flick of his wrist, he tapped the 'enter' key and stepped back.

They both watched – him with anticipation, her with that ball of fear that kept rolling up her throat – as the android's optic glowed white. There was that jerk, and Rhea stepped back again. It may have been bolted in tight but that didn't mean the bastard couldn't break free.

Slight jittering, though the head was not glitching quite so hard now. It fell still after some time. Then, to her surprise, the android looked at him, and it spoke:

"Please input command."

A woman's voice, one that reminded her of her mother, back when she was still alive.

Her father let out a slight laugh before approaching the terminal again. He typed in a command and hit 'enter'. "Can you hear me, Halcyon?"

"I can hear you," the womanvoice said. "What is your command?"

"I'd like you to control the android," he said. "Do me a favour and wave at my daughter in the back. Her name's Rhea. Cute, isn't she?"

The android looked at Rhea and leaned slightly forward off its rack. "She is a very cute child." The android raised its arm and gave a little wave. "Hello, Rhea," it said, voice chipper, almost playful.

Rhea twiddled her thumbs and furrowed her brow. She let out a sound that was… well, a sound, and then she found herself holding her breath. Not because she thought the android would leap at her, but because, deep down, part of her wasn't sure it wouldn't.

The womanvoice spoke again: "I sense discomfort. I can assure you I do not bite… unless I am programmed to do so."

She made the sound again: that eeeagh. "Dad, maybe you could remove the arms? You know… just in case."

He chuckled. "And what, leave her flapping around like a busted mop? C'mon, kiddo, she's not gonna hurt you."

"She sounds like she could," Rhea muttered.

"She's running about four percent brainpower right now," Viren said, leaning down to check a readout. "If she wanted to hurt you, she'd need at least twenty. And a reason. You haven't given her one, have you?"

Rhea looked at the android, then back at him. "I dunno. I might've blinked wrong."

He smiled, the tired kind. "Well then, I'll make sure she doesn't take offense to blinking."

"Just saying," Rhea mumbled. "You'd miss me if I lost an arm."

Her father paused for half a second longer than she liked. Then he reached out and ruffled her green hair. "Yeah, Little Spark. I would."

Rhea ran a hand through her hair. "Hey, Dad, why do they want you working on machines anyway?"

"Who?"

"The investors you always talk about."

Her father turned over to the terminal and pressed a key, deactivating the android. "It's not that they want me to. I borrowed a lot of money from someone."

"Is that the woman with the white hair?" Rhea said, getting goosebumps just at the thought of her. She'd seen her visit the lab on occasion, and each time, she had this undercurrent that made Rhea feel all kinds of uncomfortable. She wasn't all that different from that creepy android.

"[Redacted]?"

Rhea thought the name sounded off, somewhat snakish. "Yeah. Her."

"I actually have a meeting with her soon," her father said. "And I suppose she sees potential in me. In this idea. I think that if we can design a chip that gets machines to make their own decisions, then we can better society. Machines that can handle complex work, that can think for themselves, that can script their own code to solve new problems. Look, it's grown-up stuff. You don't have to worry about grown-up stuff."

Rhea looked down at her shoes for a long time and then said, "It's not that…. I just care about you, Dad." Slowly, she added, "You're working a lot."

"Rhea," he said sharply. "Stop it."

She frowned, in a very reticent sort of way.

After a moment, he sighed and reached over to shut off the computer terminal. The fan clicked down to a soft hum. "Don't pout like that," he said gently. "You'll get very sick. Terminal pouting. Doctors say it's incurable."

That got her lip twitching, just a little.

He leaned in, tapped the tip of her nose with one calloused finger. "We'd have to quarantine you in the attic. Feed you through a straw."

She rolled her eyes, but the smile came anyway, reluctant as can be.

"There she is," he said, smiling back. "Much better. You keep frowning like that and the whole building starts to lean."

They stared at each other, and the smile kept growing; it was one of those smiles she didn't care to admit, but it always found a way of coming up, because fathers had a special way of digging it out.

Then – thump – a kick at the door.

And a voice soon followed:

"Little help here!"

Rhea knew the voice right away. That high-pitched rasp: someone trying to sound tougher than they were. Her heart jumped a little before she could stop it.

Viren smirked under his breath. "Alright," he said, reaching for the data shard and locking it back in its case. "I'll let you two have your fun. But take it easy, alright? No hacking my prototypes when I'm not looking."

She was already halfway to the door. She hadn't been expecting him so soon.

When she pulled it open, there he was: Lucian Strider, one arm hooked through the fraying strap of an overstuffed rufflesack, the other bracing the load against his hip. His boots were too big, his sleeves uneven, and his shirt was smeared with grease that didn't quite hide the holes, but he still stood with confidence. And his hair – this time – was dyed silver, bright against the dark brown of his skin, wild in patches like he'd done it in a cracked mirror and ran out of dye halfway through.

"You just gonna stand there, or you wanna help before I tip over and break my spine?" he said, breathless.

Rhea grabbed the side of the sack, lightening the load just enough for him to catch his balance. "What is this? You bring half the junkyard?"

"Quarter, maybe," Lucian said. "Old man let me keep whatever I could carry."

Viren stepped into view, wiping his hands on a plaid cloth stained with things that probably shouldn't be named. "What've you got this time, Lucian?"

"Couple cracked servo joints, one partially fried logic board, and… maybe the core from an old street drone." He hesitated. "If it's not too much trouble."

Viren gestured towards the stairway. "Nothing I haven't seen before. Just don't spill capacitor fluid on the floor this time. It eats through the tile."

"No promises," Lucian said, already hauling the sack inside.

Rhea stepped aside to let him pass, shooting him a look. "You're gonna blow something up one day."

Lucian smirked. "Only if you help."

They lugged the sack towards the stairwell – thin metal stairs that creaked under every step and always smelled faintly of ozone and glue – and stopped at the base to catch their breath.

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Viren hung up his lab coat on the rack by the door and tugged on his winter jacket, then fixed his glasses in that way he always did when he was about to say something serious. "Alright, Rhea. I'll be back in a couple hours. Just a work meeting. Please... try not to wreck the place."

She gave a salute. "Can't make any promises."

Lucian added under his breath, "But we'll try real hard."

"Careful, Lucian," said Viren in a deep voice. "Or I'll have to have a word with your father. And we both know how that'll end, don't we?" He was joking – Rhea knew by the smile – but it never failed to keep Lucian in line.

"Yes, Dr. Steele," said Lucian, his eyes wider than they ought to be. His hand went up to the wrinkle of his shirt and rested there. Rhea thought he might have been pretending to be afraid, but when Viren gave a firm nod and went out the door, shutting it behind him, he turned to Rhea and said, "Man, your dad scares the hell out of me sometimes."

Rhea raised an eyebrow. "He's the scary one? You're the one dragging in exploding junk like it's Luminara."

He rubbed at the back of his neck and glanced towards the stairs. "Nah, it's not that," he said after a second. "It's just… weird when someone talks to me like I matter. Like I'm actually allowed to be here."

"Maybe it's because you are allowed to be here?"

"I know," he said, sinking down to his knees and gripping the sack at the bottom. With a grunt, he lifted it, and Rhea pulled on the flaps. "Still, it's weird hearing it out loud. Plus, your dad's tall as hell. He's like –" He puffed as they started up the stairs. "– if a vending machine got a PhD."

Rhea snorted. "What does that even mean?"

"Tall. Square. Kind of scary if you press the wrong button."

She laughed. "You've pressed the wrong button."

"I live on the wrong button," he said, adjusting the sack as it knocked into the railing. "Man's got that I'll-disassemble-you-in-your-sleep energy. Like a sci-fi Dracula."

Rhea grinned. "He's not that bad. He makes really good grilled cheese."

"Yeah, well, Dracula probably made killer fondue too – still wouldn't trust him alone with my spine."

"Shut up!" Rhea laughed, swatting Lucian's arm as they dragged the sack upstairs, finally reaching the second floor.

The upstairs lab wasn't cramped like the one below. It was bigger – a lot bigger. A flat, open-air rooftop workspace that Viren had reinforced himself years ago with metal paneling and heat-treated flooring, half-experiment station, half-garden of misfit tech. There was no ceiling, just sky, and the rusted support beams that framed the place with old wires, ivy, and the occasional stretch of LED ribbon that came to life when the solar charge hit just right.

It used to be her mother's garden.

Before she died, this whole rooftop had been full of planter boxes and trellises, strawberries growing alongside server racks, sunflowers taller than Rhea's head. Her father had tried to keep it up at first, but things fell away – too much grief, too little time. Now only a few stubborn plants clung to life at the edges, sprouting from cracked pots or growing straight out of welded drainpipes.

He never did most of his real experiments up here. Said it didn't feel right. Said this space was still hers.

Along the far ledge was a waist-high wall where they could look out across The Scrubs. Rhea always said it looked better from up here. You could pretend the smoke wasn't so thick, the neon signs weren't always dying, the trash heaps weren't climbing. At the right time of day, just before dusk, even The Scrubs looked to be a place worth growing up in.

They liked it better up there. No walls. No rules. Just the two of them, a busted sack of scrap, and whatever they could make out of it.

And in this case, it had been one thing only: Scrapboy.

Her father had given them one of his android frames many, many months ago to play around with, and Lucian – the budding roboticist that he was – had decided it would be a good idea to start building their own robot to pass the time. And yeah, what resulted was a montage of amateur welding, soldering, and a little bit of coding, because Lucian had always been good with his hands. He could fix things that older kids wouldn't even dare touch, and in those evenings where everyone would turn in from the rain, he'd be out picking up parts his dad would let him take to the lab. His dad owned a junkyard; any parts still functional Lucian just had to have, however little there were.

Rhea, on the other hand, was good with her brain. A bit of a problem-solver, a bit of an amateur coder, because despite The Scrubs having no formal education system for the younger generation, her father would teach her important things, like how to tie shoelaces, how to use a computer, and… well, how to code. Granted, he didn't force her into any of this; Rhea had just been born with an enormous hunger for knowledge. And hey, she got good at it. She could even code in her sleep sometimes: little scripts and logic puzzles she ran in her head. Her father said it was a gift, but Rhea never thought of it that way. It was just what made sense. The world outside was loud and mean and broken most days, but lines of code? They obeyed. They had rules. If something went wrong, it was because you missed a bracket. Not because someone hated you, or the power went out again, or a cop in The Scrubs decided you looked funny. Code was fair. Cleaner. Honest.

Or, so she thought.

Lucian Strider tipped the bag over and pulled it from the back, causing everything to spill out. All sorts of crap she couldn't even begin to name, but she trusted that it was all functional. "Figured Scrapboy could use a new core," he said. "Maybe one day it'll actually move."

"Maybe one day it'll actually stop falling apart," Rhea said, crouching beside the mess. She picked up what looked like half a camera lens duct-taped to a fan blade. "What even is this?"

Lucian shrugged. "Art."

She gave him a look. "Fine. Junk. But functional junk."

He headed over to the other side of the lab, past the plants, steel tables, and tinkers' gewgaws, to the tarp. He yanked the tarp off, and underneath was the wondrous length of Scrapboy: a metal frame with noodle arms, bolted jaw, and a habit of sparking when you looked at it wrong. "Alright," Lucian said, cracking his knuckles. "Let's make him beautiful."

"You mean less ugly."

Lucian reached behind Scrapboy's feet and dragged out a toolbox next to a garden hose, the one her father used to water the weeds, sometimes. "Potato, potato."

And just like that, they got to work. Little by little, hour by hour, they started pulling the broken guts from the chassis. Lucian unscrewed a rusted panel with his teeth clenched, while Rhea sifted through the pile for something that looked vaguely like a capacitor. She found one, half-melted, and tossed it aside. The next one was better.

"Hold this," she said, and Lucian passed her a soldering iron still warm from the last use. She steadied the board with her fingers and made the connection, her hands small, but at least practiced.

Lucian popped open the old drone core he'd salvaged, poking at the fried circuits with a screwdriver. "Think we could rewire this to the main bus?"

"Only if you don't fry the rail again," Rhea muttered, digging out a spare fuse and tossing it his way.

"Say," Lucian replied, catching it without a problem, "what's that your dad's working on downstairs?"

"Oh," Rhea said. Truthfully, she was surprised he didn't know. She could have sworn he'd told her on more than one occasion. "An AI algorithm. He's gonna change the world."

"What kind of algorithm?"

Rhea paused, twisting a loose wire around her finger. "It's… hard to explain. Something about adaptive cognition. He says it can rewrite itself depending on how it learns."

Lucian blinked. "Like... it teaches itself?"

"Yeah," she said. "But not just math or chess or anything dumb. Feelings. Empathy. Like, actual thought."

Lucian gave a low whistle. "That's either genius or terrifying."

Rhea grinned. "Both. That's my dad."

Lucian leaned back on his hands, eyeing her with a crooked smile. "Yeah, well… remind me not to piss off the robot downstairs."

Rhea laughed. "You'd have to piss it off first. And you're too boring for that."

"Wow," Lucian said, clutching his chest. "Wounded."

She chuckled heartily, and she stood up straight, looking out over The Scrubs. The rooftop was quiet except for the drone of the city below: the faint hum of old cars, far-off shouting, a vendor cart bell clanging in the wind. Rhea stretched her arms high above her head until her spine cracked, then wandered over to the lab sink tucked between two old planter boxes. The pipes wheezed as she turned the faucet, and the water came out warm and cloudy at first, but she let it run clear. Filled a glass halfway. Drank like she hadn't seen water in days. The heat of the summer afternoon sat heavy on her shoulders, and the sweat down her neck told her it was only getting worse. For a second, she wondered if they should head downstairs for a bit, just to keep in the shade and take a break.

She turned back to Lucian, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. "Hey, you think—"

A sudden spritz hit her dead in the face.

Water. Cold, sharp, and fast.

She gasped, blinking through it, and realised her vest and shirt were soaked, her hair plastered to her forehead.

Lucian stood nearby, holding the cracked valve hose, smirking. "Sorry," he said innocently. "It slipped."

Rhea wiped her face with both hands. "You're dead."

"Totally worth it."

She charged him before he could run. He yelped, backpedalling hard and nearly tripping over the junk sack behind him. She tackled him half-laughing, half-yelling, and the two of them tumbled across the floor, knocking over a bucket of fasteners. She popped up first, snatched the hose, and gave him the full brunt of her vengeance.

They tore through the rooflab, spraying water everywhere and knocking things to the ground. So much for keeping things clean, thought Rhea, as she continued to hose Lucian down until his silver fuzzcut was flat against his little head. Any more water and she swore she could have beaten the dye clean off. But as they played in the water and laughed as if nothing could interrupt them, something did interrupt them: a clang rushing up the stairwell.

Their laughter died instantly.

Rhea froze mid-step. Lucian looked as if someone had yanked the air out of him.

And when she scanned the chaos – the toppled crates, the puddles, the fried circuit boards half-submerged in water – she turned to him with a single word:

"Shit."

They quickly started picking everything up, knowing full well that there wouldn't be anywhere near enough time to clean this mess up, but as Rhea placed all the knocked bits back onto the lab tables, she heard a voice from down stairs. Her voice.

"Is this it?" the woman said.

"Keep cleaning," Rhea told Lucian, and she crept to the stairwell's edge, bare feet quiet on the damp floor, and pressed herself low beside the rail.

"Why don't you show me the progress? I hope you're not wasting my time with this little… venture, Viren."

Rhea didn't need to see her to know the name. The voice was unmistakable.

It was [Redacted].

She swallowed hard and crept down another step. Just enough to peek through the slit between the handrail and the wall.

There she was.

White quiff. Square jaw. Black military jeans tucked into reinforced boots. A vest that looked less like body armour and more like it had seen war. She stood with her arms folded and her eyes cutting across the room. She had the build of a soldier – no, a war machine in waiting.

Rhea had only seen her once before. Briefly. Years ago. But even now, she could feel the pressure coming off her as Viren ran the AI algorithm through a series of tests.

"I want results," [Redacted] eventually said, taking a slow step forward, inspecting the android on the loader frame. "You said it would be functional by now."

Viren didn't answer right away. She could only see part of him: shoulders squared, back tight, the way it got when he was bluffing under pressure. "It speaks," he said carefully. "Recognises input. But the learning systems need refinement. I won't sign off on neural autonomy until I'm certain it won't—"

"You're stalling."

Rhea winced. The tone [Redacted] used wasn't loud, but it left no room for doubt.

"I'm protecting the project," Viren replied.

[Redacted] approached him. "Listen, you're a nice guy, Viren, a smart one, too. But how long has this project really been going on?"

"Six years," the womanvoice said, the AI.

"See?" [Redacted] said. "Even the machine knows you're wasting my time."

Viren stood his ground. "It's not wasting time to get it right. Neural autonomy isn't a light switch; it's not just on or off. You try to rush the scaffolding, you end up with a fragmentary loop. A stutter-brain. You don't want something this powerful forming its own thoughts on unstable code."

[Redacted] gave him a long look. Then she stepped past him, towards the android, and ran her gloved hand along the android's face as if petting a sleeping dog. "Do you know what I see when I look at this?" she asked.

Viren didn't answer.

"A war," she said. "One we're going to lose if we don't start thinking bigger. The city's coming apart. Control systems are failing. The South District already went dark, and you think we've got time to play with training wheels?"

"I think we've got time not to hand the steering wheel to something we don't understand."

[Redacted] exhaled through her nose. A smile curled her lips. "Always the philosopher," she said. "But here's the thing. You don't own this project, Viren. You're a tenant. A guest in a space we funded. Which means when I say I need results, I'm not asking."

She tapped the terminal. The screen lit up in blue. The AI's optic flickered. "I'll give you one more week. After that, I bring in my own people. The kind who don't lose sleep over ethics."

Rhea felt her stomach twist. She looked over at Lucian, whose face had gone still and pale in the shadows. Yeah, he stopped cleaning.

Downstairs, Viren's voice was quiet now. "[Redacted]... you bring in your people, you'll ruin her. You'll twist everything she could become into a weapon."

"She already is a weapon," [Redacted] said, stepping back. "You just haven't pulled the trigger."

Viren's eyes flicked past [Redacted]'s shoulder and landed on Rhea, who hadn't realised how far she'd crept down the stairwell. [Redacted] turned and spotted her on the stairwell, too. [Redacted]'s face was [BLURRED] and it made her stomach crawl.

"Well now," [Redacted] said, tone syrupy and bright. "And who's this little listener?"

Rhea couldn't speak. Her legs had gone stiff, locked at the knees. Her throat felt tight, dry. She tried to swallow and couldn't.

Viren said, "My daughter. She's not part of this."

[Redacted]'s smile didn't waver. But something behind it cracked. "Sure she is," she said. "She's part of you. And that makes her… part of this."

Lucian was close behind Rhea now, hand grabbing her sleeve, trying to tug her back, slow. But Rhea didn't move. Couldn't. She stared into that wrong smile, into those pale grey eyes that didn't quite blink in sync.

"She's got good instincts," [Redacted] went on, tilting her head. "Creeping down here to eavesdrop? That's initiative."

"She's a child," Viren snapped, stepping between them. "And you're wasting your time."

[Redacted] looked at him for a long beat. Then she turned her back to both of them and started towards the exit. "Tick-tock, Viren," she called over her shoulder. "Seven days."

The door hissed open, then shut behind her with a pneumatic sigh that sounded almost like relief.

And then silence.

Viren let out a breath and sank down into the nearest chair. His glasses had fogged. His hands were trembling, just a little.

Upstairs, Rhea finally managed to move. She turned, and met Lucian's eyes. Neither said a word.

And outside, the wind began to howl against the sides of the building, moaning, petering off now….

The Scrubs groaned beneath it.

And somewhere, deep inside the walls, the android buzzed softly, one slow whine of circuitry that sounded almost like breathing.

Almost like waiting.

Seven days….