Evolved(44)

I woke up anchored to Shaun. He was lying with his head on my chest, my arm around his shoulder.

“Good morning,” he said gently. “I was going to wake you for work, but I would much rather you stay in bed with me.”

I smiled and stroked his hair, how I knew he liked it. “What time is it?”

“Nine minutes past seven.”

I stretched out and slid my arm back around him for a quick cuddle before I had to get up. “I wish I could stay here with you,” I murmured.

“Yes, who decided that humans needed to work? I would like to write them a strongly worded letter.”

I chuckled and kissed the top of his head. “Shower with me.”

He looked up at me, grinning. “If I have to.” He commando rolled off the bed and had the water running before I could sit up.



I tried to contain my edginess when I saw Jae walk into the lunchroom. He had his usual soup and mandarin on a tray and slid into the seat across from me. “I wondered if you’d be in today,” I said, folding and ironing flat my lunch wrapper with my fingers.

He took a spoonful of soup. “Yeah, sorry. Got caught up yesterday with line issues in the science department.”

“Get everything sorted out?”

He nodded. “About that thing you asked me to look into.” Another spoonful of soup. My guess was he was going for pretence in case someone was watching. God, when did I get so paranoid? “I have some friends in Singapore and Taiwan who know people who work for the sister company.”

I knew who he meant. ATAinc, or Android Technology Asia, was a sister division of SATinc. “And?”

“They said the company protocols are global, so there’s reason to believe if it happens there, it can happen here.”

“What happens?”

“I asked what kind of access they have when an android is registered through the home hub.” He ate more of his soup. “Anyway, after they stopped laughing, they said complete.”

“Complete access?”

Jae nodded again and finished his soup while I got my head around what that meant.

“Can they upload diagnostics on things such as CPUs and battery health? That kind of thing?” I asked.

“Probably. They can upload all health stats and diagnostics and see how it’s running. Whether that gives mainframe data or just running capabilities… well, before today, I wouldn’t believe they could know that without actually accessing the android, physically. But now I’m not sure.” Then he waved his hand dismissively. “But I’m not talking about the android, Lloyd. I mean complete access to you. They can now see your grocery order, what movies you watch, when you use your key card to leave your apartment.”

I didn’t give a damn what they could see about me. I needed to know what they could see about Shaun.

“They’re not supposed to,” he went on to say. “By law, I mean. They are supposed to run on a unidirectional network, secure from hackers and all that bullshit. But if they wanted to spy? Hell yes, they could.”

“Would they? Do you think they’d risk it?”

He shrugged. “Depends on what’s at stake? And for a little guy like you? I’d be thinking no.”

“Little guy?”

He snorted. “Compared to the military or the Australian Defence Force, yeah.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, they have androids in the military, right?”

“Yes. And police force.”

“Right. So they send in androids to foreign countries, into foreign armies. I mean, they make these androids for other countries, right?”

“Military grade, yes.”

“Well, imagine if they used multidirectional networks?” He leaned in and whispered, “Imagine if they could upload data on what the android sees, hears. They’d have implanted spies in every country…” He shook his head and let out a slow breath. “This is huge, Lloyd. This is bigger than I ever thought about.”

Oh boy.

Then his eyes narrowed at me. “Just what kind of android do you have?”

So here it was. I could lie or deflect or tell him not to worry about it, but he was helping me and surely I owed him the truth. “An A-Class. Android, not gynoid.”

I just outed myself.

His eyes widened, followed by his smile. “Wow.”

I cleared my throat. “Yes, wow.”

“I’ve read reviews. All five-star, I might add.” Then he stopped, his smirk disappeared, and he sat up straight. “Wait. You think they’re spying on you through your android?”

Clearly the fact I liked men and not women didn’t even rate as interesting, much less the fact I was technosexual. “I’m not sure. They’ve asked some rather peculiar follow-up questions that raised a little red flag for me.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Repeating questions like they’re trying to catch me out. They ask me if I’m happy with my purchase and if I believe everything is running okay, any unusual behaviour.”

Jae tilted his head. “That is peculiar.” Then he pointed his finger at me. “You know, I read something online about the A-Class the other week. Something to do with a framework and an error code. I didn’t read the article because it wasn’t of interest to me then. I’ll see if I can find it for you. Maybe they’re trying to ask without admitting there was an error somewhere. Like maybe the framework error makes an android speak random Spanish or something.”