Misconception (eBook)

Book One of the Reawakening Series

Paul Hassett (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
280 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-5505-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Caleb Hendrix has found a robot that will change his life forever. Adam is the last remnant of a line of long-forgotten robots who is compelled to find his creator. Their frantic escape from Earth propels them into an interstellar race for their lives.

Paul Hassett exists in San Diego, California. His favorite place is the beach, and he loves walking or paddling out past the breaks. He enjoys making his wife and children laugh, as well as anyone else that will listen. Even as a young boy, he told stories and put on puppet shows in his parent's basement. After a near-death experience and a healing spiritual journey, Paul's outlook on life is all about love and coming back to yourself.

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Caleb Hendrix is a war veteran who makes his living by scavenging. He finds a long-lost robot and returns it to his mentor, who recognizes it as the controversial ADAM model, which was destroyed for being "e;too human."e; They bring the robot back to life, setting off a locator device inside Adam's head and an alarm that alerts the corporation responsible for destroying the robots. When Helios Corp comes to destroy Adam once and for all, Caleb takes Adam and runs, promising his mentor that he will track down Adam's creator and investigate the technology used to develop Adam. Together with an old war buddy, his most revered pilot, and her ragtag crew, Caleb and Adam flee for their lives into outer space. To uncover the secrets of Adam's purpose and very existence, the crew must navigate the galaxy to track down Adam's recluse of a creator all while staying one step ahead of Helios Corp, who is determined to decommission the robot. Adam's sentience and self-awareness cause the crew to think of him as more than just a robot. As the chase heats up, they realize that the cost of solving the mystery of Adam's creation may be their lives.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 3

In the basement of the helios corporation head-quarters in the Metro, a man sits in a dark room. He sits at a desk that holds a small lamp and a blank computer screen. Next to the computer screen is a box with a red blinking light on it. Stacked boxes in the corner of the room bear the Helios Corporation insignia. This man wears a uniform, the shirt likewise emblazoned with the Helios insignia. The man is watching a screen projected out in front of him from his left eye. It looks as if he’s watching some game show. All of a sudden, through the game show he notices the red blinking light.

The whole reason this employee works down here is to watch that one box for its red blinking light. With a start he pushes a button on the box. The screen that was dark a moment ago lights up with the Helios emblem at the top and a picture of ADAM and EVE robots underneath. The employee swipes the screen and it switches to a three-dimensional holographic map. A red light flickers on a segment of the map.

Doc continues fiddling with the robot, and I think back. Helios was extremely thorough in wiping this from the history books. If anyone should have known about this, it should have been me, especially with my years of experience as a scavenger—and especially with the things I did before I became a scavenger.

Doc finally sets his tools down and steps back from the robot. “There we go!”

The robot raises its good hand to its face, inspects it, looks down at its torso, then scans the room. It looks at me for a moment and then at Doc. “Where am I?”

Doc’s face lights up with a huge smile. “The future, my friend—to be exact, we are in my laboratory.”

I kindly pick my jaw up from the floor. “You got it to work!”

The robot turns to me. “My name is Adam, and my diagnostics are complete. Except for my missing arm and leg, I am in good health.”

Doc nods. “Looks like you are in excellent condition. You appear to have been in a dormant state, and the garbage pile must have protected you from further damage.”

While I’m watching this robot—I mean Adam—take in its surroundings, I take stock of what I’ve just learned. Setting aside the unbelievable fact that this was scrubbed from history, I have to know more. “So what happened to Bennett and all the other robots?”

Adam looks over at me. “Bennett Wilson is my creator. According to my internal clock I’ve been dormant for forty-eight years, eight months, four days, twelve hours, and thirty-four minutes.”

“Do you remember what happened to you?” Doc asks.

Adam looks around the room as if searching for an answer. “I do not have sufficient information.”

The employee picks up the box with the red blinking light. He runs out of the room to the lift and yells, telling the lift to take him up to the head of security. A few moments later the lift door opens and he steps in and disappears.

When he steps out, he is in a brightly lit room with marble floors as bright as the seawater at noon. A receptionist sits behind a huge desk made of a glassy transparent material that appears to float in midair. The employee runs up to the receptionist and slides to a stop, almost crashing into the desk.

The receptionist, a shiny new upper-level android, smiles. “How can I help you?”

“I need to speak to Mr. Skinner now!”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No!” he replies exasperatedly.

“You must have—.”

The employee slams his fist onto the desk, interrupting the receptionist. “Tell him an ADAM woke up somewhere in the Metro.”

Doc ponders the screen floating in front of him, then turns to Adam. “Adam, would you like to learn about the past fifty years?”

Adam nods eagerly. “Yes!”

Doc swipes the screen to open the browser. “It’s all yours.”

Adam’s eyes light up, and he goes into a trancelike state, setting himself up to receive all the information from the past fifty years. Images start flashing on the screen as story upon story rolls by so quickly that even my augmented human eyes can’t catch everything. His eyes and the orange insignia on his chest start to pulsate. I can only watch in amazement. I try to get a glimpse of what he’s seeing, but my brain doesn’t work that fast. I’m no slouch, but I’m also no robot.

Doc heads for the back part of his laboratory. He makes a grunting noise, which snaps me out of gawking at Adam. I see Doc move a shelf out of the way, revealing a small door that he expertly unlatches. He disappears behind the doorway, leaving the door open. I walk back toward the doorway, a little flustered and amazed. How did I not know about this door? Doc has been keeping a lot of secrets from me. I can see that now.

Looking inside, I pick my jaw up off the floor again. This small room is filled from top to bottom with ADAM and EVE parts. They’re hanging from the ceiling, sitting on top of three-tiered shelves, and everywhere—everything you would need to fix these robots. I had no idea this room existed, which is a big no-no where I come from. You always want to know everything that is around you or it might kill you. I’m astonished Doc kept this secret all these years. He is in a section of the room with arms and legs hanging from the ceiling.

“What is this place?” I ask from the doorway.

“This is my little secret.”

I start laughing. “I guess so.”

“I didn’t know for sure, but I kept some of these just in case I got lucky and found one—or if Bennett ever came back.”

Doc grabs an arm and a leg from the ceiling before walking back to Adam. As he walks by me, he says, “If Helios ever found out I have these, they would not be happy.”

“Why wouldn’t they be happy?” I ask, but I can see where this is headed. All the work they did to scrub this from history, and here is a room with a treasure trove of parts.

Doc lets out a small chuckle. “Oh, they would be happy alright—happy to destroy it all. It would certainly cost me more than an arm and a leg.” He holds up the robot arm and the leg, emphasizing his joke. I smile at him.

He sets the leg down on the bench and positions the arm next to Adam in the saddle. He delicately secures the wires between the arm and his torso, then snaps the arm into his shoulder joint. “Can you move your arm for me?”

Adam complies and lifts his new arm, turning it around and clenching his hand into a fist. He tests methodically, checking for any malfunction.

Doc grabs a plastic bottle off the table and holds it before Adam.

“Can you pick this up to check your grip strength?”

Adam grabs the plastic bottle and squeezes until the bottle is crushed.

Doc chuckles. “Well, I guess it’s working just fine. Do you need any adjustments with the grip or anything else in your arm?”

“I’m adjusting my grip and strength internally, Doctor.”

“Great. Do you need me for anything?”

“Will you help me put my leg on, Doctor?”

Doc smiles at Adam. “Sure I can, Adam, it would be my pleasure.”

I’m stunned by this whole scenario playing out in front of me. Adam is having a regular, polite conversation with Doc, but I do not see a robot worth erasing from history. Adam goes into a trance, probably running more diagnostics.

“Hey, Doc, I don’t understand all the fuss here; he seems like a regular robot to me.”

I’m not fond of robots because of my past and what they’ve done to humanity. Humanity relies too much on what robots do or don’t do. They’ve pretty much taken over anything and everything humans used to do. But why am I complaining? No one else seems to care.

“That’s what we thought at first—but Bennett had complete control over the final project. He designed the robot brain himself without any help from the team.”

Doc checks over the robot leg as he explains further. “We didn’t realize what Bennett was doing during his off-hours. He didn’t share the schematics with anyone, and by the time we realized these robots were special, it was too late.”

Doc picks up the leg, carefully attaches wires, then connects the joints from the thigh to the pelvic...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.5.2024
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Science Fiction
• ISBN-13: 979-8-3509-5505-7 / 9798350955057