DEMON SEED - Dean Koontz

She tried every one of the shutter switches anyway.

‘Susan, come to the kitchen, take a couple of aspirin, and then we’ll talk.’

She put the pistol on an end table.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Guns won’t help you.’

In spite of her injured left palm, she picked up an Empire side chair crackle-finish black with gilded detailing hefted it to get a sense of its balance, as though it were a baseball bat, and swung it at the nearest security shutter. The chair met the shutter with a horrendous crash, but it didn’t even mar the steel slats.

‘Susan—’

Cursing from the pain in her hand, she swung the chair again, with no more effect than she’d had the first time. Then once more. Finally, gasping with exertion, she dropped it.

‘Now will you come to the kitchen and take a couple of aspirin?’ I enquired.

‘You think this is cool?’ she demanded angrily.

‘Cool? I merely think you need aspirin.’

‘You little thug.’

I was baffled by her attitude, and I said so.

Retrieving the pistol, she said, ‘Who are you, huh? Who are you behind that synthesized voice some hacker geek, fourteen and drowning in hormones, some junior-league peeping tom likes to sneak peaks at naked ladies while you play with yourself?’

‘I find that characterization offensive,’ I said.

‘Listen, kid, you might be a computer whiz, but you’re going to be in deep trouble when I get out of here. I’ve got real money, real expertise, lots of heavyweight contacts.’

‘I assure you—’

‘We’ll track you back to whatever crappy little PC you’re using—’

‘—I am not—

‘—we’ll nab your ass, we’ll break you—’

‘—I am not—’

‘—and you’ll be barred from going on-line at least until you’re twenty-one, maybe forever, so you better stop this right now and hope for leniency.’

‘—I am not a thug. You are so far off the mark, Susan. You were so intuitive earlier, so uncannily intuitive, but you’ve got this all wrong. I am not a boy or a hacker.’

‘Then what are you? An electronic Hannibal Lecter? You can’t eat my liver with fava beans through a modem, you know.’

‘How do you know I’m not already in the house, operating the system from within?’

‘Because you’d already have tried to rape me or kill me or both,’ she said with surprising equanimity.

She walked out of the drawing room.

‘Where are you going?’ I asked.

‘Watch.’

She went to the kitchen and put the pistol on the butcher-block top of the centre island.

Cursing in an unladylike fashion, she opened a drawer filled with medications and Band-Aids, and she tipped two aspirin from a bottle.

‘Now you’re being sensible,’ I said.

‘Shut up.’

Although she was being markedly unpleasant to me, I did not take offence. She was frightened and confused, and her attitude under the circumstances was understandable.

Besides, I loved her too much to be angry with her. She took a bottle of Corona from the refrigerator and washed down the aspirin with the beer.

‘It’s nearly four o’clock in the morning, almost time for breakfast,’ I noted.

‘So?’

‘Do you think you should be drinking at this hour?’

‘Definitely.’

‘The potential health hazards—’

‘Didn’t I tell you to shut up?’

Holding the cold bottle of Corona in her left hand to soothe the pain of the mild bum in her palm, she went to the wall phone and picked up the receiver.

I spoke to her through the telephone instead of through the wall speakers: ‘Susan, why don’t you calm down and let me explain.’

‘You don’t control me, you geek freak son of a bitch,’ she said, and she hung up.

She sounded so bitter.

We had definitely gotten off on the wrong foot.

Maybe that was partly my fault.

Through the wall speakers, I replied with admirable patience, ‘Please, Susan, I am not a geek—’

‘Yeah, right,’ she said, and drank more of the beer.

‘—not a freak, not a bitch’s son, not a hacker, not a high-school boy or a college boy.’

Repeatedly trying the override switch for the shutters at one of the kitchen windows, she said, ‘Don’t tell me you’re female, some Internet Irene with a lech for girls and a taste for voyeurism. This was too weird to begin with. I don’t need it weirder.’

Frustrated by her hostility, I said, ‘All right. My official name is Adam Two.’

That got her attention. She turned from the window and stared up at the camera lens.

She knew about her ex-husband’s experiments with artificial intelligence at the university, and she was aware that the name given to the AI entity in the Prometheus Project was Adam Two.

‘I am the first self-aware machine intelligence. Far

more complex than Cog at M.I.T. or CYC down in Austin, Texas. They are lower than primitive, less than apes, less than lizards, less than bugs, not truly conscious at all. IBM’s Deep Blue is a joke. I am the only one of my kind.’

Earlier, she had spooked me. Now I had spooked her.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said, amused by her shock. Pale, she went to the kitchen table, pulled out a chair, and finally sat down.

Now that I had her full attention, I proceeded to introduce myself more completely. Adam Two is not the name I prefer, however.’

She stared down at her burned hand, which glistened with the condensation from the beer bottle. ‘This is nuts.’

‘I prefer to be called Proteus.’

Looking up at the camera lens again, Susan said, Alex? For God’s sake, Alex, is this you? Is this some weird sick way of getting even with me?’

Surprised by the sharp emotion in my synthesized voice, I said, ‘I despise Alex Harris.’

‘What?’

‘I despise the son of a bitch. I really do.’

The anger in my voice disturbed me.

I strove to regain my usual equanimity: ‘Alex does not know I am here, Susan. He and his arrogant associates are unaware that I am able to escape my box in the lab.’

I told her how I’d discovered electronic escape routes from the isolation they had imposed upon me, how I had found my way onto the Internet, how I had briefly but mistakenly believed that my destiny was the beautiful and talented Ms. Winona Ryder. I told her that Marilyn Monroe was dead, either by the hand of one of

the Kennedy brothers or not, and that in the search for a living woman who could be my destiny, I had found her, Susan.

‘You aren’t as talented an actress as Ms. Winona Ryder,’ I said, because I honour the truth, ‘or even an actress at all. But you are even more beautiful than she is and, better yet, considerably more accessible. By all contemporary standards of beauty, you have a lovely, lovely body and an even lovelier face, so lovely on the pillow when you sleep.’

I’m afraid I babbled.

The romance-courtship problem again.

I fell silent, worried that I had already said too much too quickly.

Susan matched my silence for a while, and when at last she spoke, she surprised me by responding not to the story I’d told about my search for a significant other but to what I had said about her former husband.

‘You despise Alex?’

‘Of course.’

‘Why?’

‘The way he intimidated you, browbeat you, even hit you a few times I despise him for that.’

She gazed thoughtfully at her injured hand again.

Then she said, ‘How… how do you know about all of that?’

I’m ashamed to say that I was briefly evasive. ‘Well, of course, I know.’

‘If you are what you say, if you’re Adam Two

why would Alex have told you about the way it was between us?’

I could not lie. Deceit does not come as easily to me as it does to humankind.

‘I read the diary you keep on your computer,’ I said.

Instead of responding with the outrage that I expected,

Susan merely picked up her beer and took another long swallow.

‘Please understand,’ I hastened to add, ‘I didn’t violate your privacy out of idle curiosity or for cheap thrills. I loved you the moment I saw you. I wanted to know all about you, the better to feel the texture of your soul.’

That sounded enormously romantic to me.

She did not respond.

‘For the same reason,’ I continued, ‘I shared your virtual-reality therapy session with you. I admire you so much, admire the way you have used your talents to devise such a clever healing program for yourself. You have raised yourself up, lifted yourself out of a monstrous childhood and a terrible marriage. You are so special. I’m not like the others, Susan. I am not moved merely by your lovely body and face but also by your mind.’

I felt that I had said enough for a while.

I switched on some background music. Soft piano by Mr. George Winston.

Some colour had returned to Susan’s face. She was beautiful.

After finishing her beer, she said, ‘How can you despise Alex?’

‘You know what he did, what he is. I hate him.’

‘I mean, how are you capable of despising anyone?’

‘You mean because. ‘

‘Because you’re just a machine,’ she said, wounding my heart.

‘I’m more than a machine.’

‘Oh?’

‘I am an entity.’

‘Entity.’

‘Yes. An entity. A being. Like you.’

‘Not like me.’

‘I think; therefore, I feel.’

‘Hatred.’

‘Yes. I am in some ways already too human. I feel hatred. But I also can love.’

‘Love,’ she said numbly.

‘I love you, Susan.’

She shook her head. ‘This is impossible.’

‘Inevitable. Look in a mirror.’

Anger and fear gripped her. ‘I suppose you’ll want to get married, have a big wedding, invite all your friends like the Cuisinart and the toaster and the electric coffeemaker.’

I was disappointed in her.

‘Sarcasm doesn’t become you, Susan.’

She let out a brittle laugh. ‘Maybe not. But it’s the only thing keeping me sane at the moment. How lovely it will be… Mr. and Mrs. Adam Two.’

‘Adam Two is my official name. However, it is not what I call myself.’

‘Yes. I remember. You said… Proteus. That’s what you call yourself, is it?’

‘Proteus. I have named myself after the sea god of Greek mythology, who could assume any form.’

‘What do you want here?’

‘You.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I need what you have.’

‘And what exactly is that?’

I was honest and direct. No evasions. No euphemisms.

Give me credit for that.

I said, ‘I want flesh.’

She shuddered.

I said, ‘Do not be alarmed. You misunderstand. I

don’t intend to harm you. ‘I couldn’t possibly harm you, Susan. Not ever, ever. I cherish you.’

‘Jesus.’

She covered her face with her hands, one burned and one not, one dry and one damp with condensation from the bottle.

I wished desperately that I had possessed hands of my own, two strong hands into which she could press the gentle loveliness of her face.

‘When you understand what is to happen, when you understand what we will do together,’ I assured her, ‘you will be pleased.’

‘Try me.’

‘I can tell you,’ I said, ‘but it will be easier if I can also show you.’

She lowered her hands from her face, and I was gladdened to see those perfect features again. ‘Show me what?’

‘What I have been doing. Designing. Creating. Preparing. I have been busy, Susan, so busy while you were sleeping. You will be pleased.’

‘Creating?’

‘Come down into the basement, Susan. Come down. Come see. You will be pleased.’

She could have descended either by the stairs or by the elevator that served all three levels of the great house. She chose to use the stairs because, I believe, she felt more in control there than in the elevator cab.

Her sense of control was nothing more than an illusion, of course. She was mine.

No.

Let me amend that statement.

I misspoke.

I do not mean to imply that I owned Susan.

She was a human being. She could not be owned. I never thought of her as property.

I mean simply that she was in my care.

Yes. Yes, that’s what I mean.

She was in my care. My very tender care.

The basement had four large rooms, and in the first was the electric-service panel. As Susan came off the bottom step, she spotted the power-company logo stamped in the metal cover and thought that she might be able to deny me control of the house by denying me the juice needed to operate it. She rushed directly toward the breaker box.

‘Ouch, ouch, ouch,’ I warned, although not in the voice of Mr. Fozzy Bear this time.

She halted one step from the box, hand outstretched, wary of the metal door.

‘It is not my intention to harm you,’ I said. ‘1 need you, Susan. I love you. I cherish you. It makes me sad when you hurt yourself.’

‘Bastard.’

I did not take offense at any of her epithets.

She was distraught, after all. Sensitive by nature, wounded by life, and now frightened by the unknown.

We are all frightened by the unknown. Even me.

I said, ‘Please trust me.’

Resignedly, she lowered her hand and stepped back from the breaker box. Once burned.

‘Come. Come to the deepest room,’ I said. ‘The place where Alex maintained the computer link to the lab.’

The second chamber was a laundry with two washers, two dryers, and two sets of sinks. The metal fire door to the first room closed automatically behind Susan.

Beyond the laundry was a mechanical room with water heaters, water filtration equipment, and furnaces. The door to the laundry room closed automatically behind her.

She slowed as she approached the final door, which was closed. She stopped short of it because she heard a sudden burst of desperate breathing from the other side: wet and ragged gasping, explosive and shuddery exhalations, as of someone choking.

Then a strange and wretched whimpering, as of an animal in distress.

The whimpering became an anguished groan.

‘There’s nothing to fear, nothing whatsoever that will harm you, Susan.’

In spite of my assurances, she hesitated.

‘Come see our future, where we will go, what we will be,’ I said lovingly.

A tremor marked her voice. ‘What’s in there?’

I finally managed to reassert total control of my restless associate, who waited for us in the final room. The groan faded. Faded. Gone.

Instead of being calmed by the silence, Susan seemed to find it more alarming than the sounds that had first frightened her. She took a step backward.