“As long as there are unanswerable questions, Sally, there’s room for God.”
The shrill red emergency alert box, high in the shadows of dark concrete halls, assaulted Sally. She was already on edge by the time her church cornered the android near a freight elevator, and felt compelled to obey the alert box—This is not a drill! Except her church was the reason it was wailing in the first place. This was just supposed to be a protest. But Emaa, the android, ran from the conference center into the back halls, and everyone chased it. The service halls were a maze. They were musty and claustrophobic. Sally was attempting to keep pace with her boyfriend, Phil, and was winded and confused. She was fighting with the zipper on her second-hand jacket. The yelling of church members reverberated, becoming incoherent. She felt stupid being the only parishioner who didn’t understand the pastor’s message on the long bus ride to the convention center.
She tried hiding in the congregation, but was jostled to the front. Sally tried joining in, “false idol, false idol,” but her voice faltered. She tried turning away from the android, but felt conspicuous. Suddenly, she was staring at the famous robot—unsettled, unnerved. Emaa Rocail was a life-sized toy. Yellow and orange tussled doll hair. Giant blue-green eyes that darted across the congregation. Pale doll skin pressed against the stained concrete wall. Delicate silicone hands clutching the gaping metal frame of an ancient freight elevator. “She’s afraid, Phil,” Sally said over the chanting crowd and chattering alert box.
“Idiot,” Phil shoved her away. “It’s a soulless machine, the Devil’s work.”
A soulless machine. Pastor Grayson called it that, and he taught straight from scripture. Can a soulless machine have feelings? Maybe it fooled her, like the Pastor says. Maybe Sally’s weak, tempted away from God. She turned from the android and tugged at her ill-fitting jeans. The other women were wearing slacks or dresses—even the robot was better dressed than her.
Pastor Fred Grayson’s voice reverberated against the conference center’s concrete halls as he brought up the rear. “And you will DESECRATE your Carved Images plated with silver, and your Cast Metal Images plated with gold.” His voice, louder, drawing closer. “You will SCATTER THEM as a filthy thing, and say to them, BE GONE!” The alert box fell silent.
Sally drew strength from the Pastor—but, here, now… there was something in his voice, rumbling, growling. Something she’d heard only once before, when she first came to his church, when the police restrained him at the trans-rights rally. There was no one to restrain him here.
“Your spiritual journey is just beginning.” An older lady had been speaking to Sally over the din. “John tells us God abides within you. Look to your heart for strength.” Sally’s heart was fearful.
She shuffled. A childhood prayer was all she could summon … be my guide in all I do, bless all those who love me, too. A parable echoed back, Luke, chapter 10, verse 25. The Parable of the Good Samaritan. But this was a clockwork, Satan’s puppet, dressed in the skin of a doll. She stared at Emaa, the frightened android. The Gospel can’t be wrong, the Bible is infallible, Pastor Grayson is her rock. But Jesus told of the Good Samaritan….
Pastor Grayson’s voice exploded over the crowd as they packed around her. The congregation chanted ‘false idol’, and ‘graven image’. The concrete walls of the service hall closed in. A musty smell from the elevator shaft struck her. Phil yelled, “Destroy the soulless thing,” next to Sally’s ear. The clamminess of Sally’s skin gave way to sweat crawling down the back of her neck.
Sally’s eyes locked with those big turquoise doll eyes. Unthinking, unprompted, Matthew 5:43 tumbled out of her, “You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.”
The crowd pushed forward, thrusting Sally toward Emaa. The android’s tremendous eyes reached Sally’s soul. Over the chanting and echoing, Sally heard Emaa pick up the verse, “But I say to you, love your—”
“ENEMY!” Sally lunged toward Emaa, shoving the android into the freight elevator, stumbling behind her, spinning about. Sally grabbed the strap hanging from the upper door and pulled it with her full weight. Instant regret. A primal yell from Pastor Grayson filled the space. The door rushed down as a second door pushed up from their feet—a giant mouth closed around them. The congregation leapt away. Pastor Grayson’s fiery eyes flew through the crowd as the metal jaws chopped shut. Misgivings swelled up. The pastor’s accusatory face vanished in a final clang of steel. A mechanism chunked into place beneath Sally’s hands, sending her stumbling backward. Emaa jumped in front and pulled a wooden gate down.
“Thank you,” Emaa said, slamming a worn black (B) button on the elevator panel. The elevator cage jerked and rattled and sank. “I wasn’t sure I’d get a signal in this old thing.”
They began to descend.
Sally screamed, “Why did you make me do this?!” The elevator shuddered and Sally grabbed the wooden gate. The gate rattled loosely, but Sally clenched it tighter. There was a smell of grease and garbage.
Emaa cocked its head. “Make you do this?”
“This,” Sally screamed, waving her free hand around her head. “You got in my head and made me do this.”
“I got in your head?”
“My head.” Sally watched through the open ceiling of the creaking cage as light and fingers appeared between the jaws of the outer door, receding above them. The doors cracked open with a dozen fingers, fingers withdrew, doors banged shut, and they’d try again. The noise of the churchgoers fading above them. Sally completed the thought, “You put scripture in my head.”
“That’s not something I can do.” Emaa smiled at her. “Isn’t scripture a good thing?”
Ignoring the question, Sally replied, “Now we’re both damned.” A bell, loud, shrill, constant, startled Sally. It stopped, then screamed again from the darkness above them. Stopped again, waited, and let loose a short burst. Sally screamed, “Stop it!” She stomped the floor and pounded the metal wall. “Stop it, stop it, stop it.”
“It’s the elevator ‘call’ bell,” Emaa explained. She walked to the opposite side of the elevator, a pale silicone hand on a dirty wooden gate identical to the one Sally gripped. “The elevator is antique and won’t return when it’s in use or the doors are left open.” The elevator shivered to a stop and Emaa threw open the rear gate. It took both of them to pull the rear metal doors open, revealing another concrete hallway. Lit harshly, lined with stacked chairs and carts of all form. “So,” Emaa explained as she pushed yellow hair off her large eyes, “we leave the doors open and hope they give up.”
Crossing her arms, Sally objected, “God’s Army doesn’t give up.”
“Probably not,” Emaa said as she stepped into the hall. “But it will take them a while to figure out where the stairs are in this old labyrinth.” The android was heading down the concrete corridor. “We can exit through the kitchen.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you, demon,” Sally replied as she left the smell of the freight elevator.
“It’s for your own safety,” Emaa replied. “They’ll be here shortly, and they looked very upset.”
Sally ran after Emaa. “Phil’s going to kill me, you know that?”
“We’ll try not to let that happen.” Emaa extended a petite hand while walking, her large sea-green eyes blinked. “My name is Emaa Rocail, but I assume you know that. What’s yours?”
Sally ignored the extended hand. “It’s Sally. And I’m a good Christian who doesn’t run from my church.”
Emaa’s gaze shifted. Sally followed it to the ceiling, down rows of conduit bracketed to concrete, to an electrical box. The box sprouted a small white disk with a flickering blue light set into it. The thing looked like a tiny smoke detector, but wasn’t. The android’s tone changed, “Well, right now, Sally, you and I need to run away from your church until the police arrive.”
The police. The police and Pastor Grayson. The police and Pastor Fred Grayson and Phil. Sally froze.
“Why do you think I’m a demon?” Emaa asked as she continued down the cold gray corridor toward a set of double doors at the end. They could see bits of a massive kitchen through windows in the doors.
Sally blurted, “Because you are a demon!” as she caught up. “A soulless machine sent by the Devil.”
“I’ll let theologians debate whether I have a soul. I only know I’m somehow sentient.”
“I don’t know what ‘sentient’ means, but it’s not a soul,” Sally hypothesized. “Because if you had a soul, you wouldn’t have run away from your owners. You’d have protected them.”
“That’s Myra and Cooper Rocail, and I love them dearly. They’re safe now because your church is chasing me.”
“You don’t actually love them. Robots can’t really love.”
“Oh, but I do.” Emaa smiled at Sally as they approached the kitchen doors. “That’s the whole point. It’s why I’m speaking at this conference. It’s why your church is chasing me. Being sentient means—”
“STOP!” The two spun around, Sally stumbling against an abandoned utility cart. Phil was on the opposite end of the corridor, passing the elevator, marching toward them. He twisted his head over his shoulder and yelled, “I found them.”
Emaa whispered, “Run.”
“I’m sorry, Phil,” Sally yelled back, as she fished a pipe as long as her forearm from the utility cart. “She’s confusing me, Phil.” Sally brandished the steel pipe. “But I don’t think you should—”
“You’re being stupid, Sally.” Phil kept marching toward them. He had covered half the distance. “Give me the pipe.” Pausing, he scratched his head. “Uh, the man is the head of the woman, as … as God is the head … Just give me the damn pipe.”
Emaa whispered, “First Corinthians. He’s manipulating you.”
“Stay away, Phil,” Sally said, waving the pipe.
Phil turned, “Hurry up, I found them.” His voice ricocheted across the concrete ceiling, walls, and floor.
Emaa whispered, “Run, now.”
Phil twisted back, “Stop listening to it, Sally. It has an unclean heart. It has the soul of the Devil.”
Sally darted glances between Phil and Emaa. “You know I love you, Phil, but…” She furrowed her brow. “Soul? Only God can—”
“That’s not what I said,” he barked. “Stop twisting my words and give me the pipe.”
Emaa corrected, “That’s precisely what you said.”
Phil jabbed a finger in Emaa’s direction, “Shut up.” He stared at her, jabbing his finger at her, wordlessly scolding.
A noisy crowd rounded a corner at the far end of the hall, Pastor Grayson leading. Deep furrows carved his forehead, stone shoulders heaved, as he lumbered forward. About a dozen church members chanted, “Flee idolatry, flee idolatry!” as they fell behind him. Sally felt the anger swelling in the crowd. She could see it in the pastor’s face.
Phil turned to the preacher, shouting, “Hurry up! I got them.”
An angelic grip on Sally’s free hand pulled her, stumbling, through the doors, into the bright kitchen. Sally forced her hand out of Emaa’s and threatened with the pipe. But the door was swinging open again, and Phil’s face burned through its window. Sally pushed Emaa around a center island that ran the length of the room.
“No, we want to go—” Emaa was pointing toward a pair of exterior doors on the other end of the kitchen—the opposite side of the island. It was too late. Phil approached, the first church members fast behind him. The congregation would reach the exit before they could.
The pair backed to shelving on the kitchen wall, edging along it, Sally waving the pipe, as church members spilled in. The shelving ended, and Sally stumbled backward to a freezer door. They moved with their backs against the freezer, while the women and older church members trailed into the kitchen. A few of the congregation were gathering cutlery. Phil motioned for Sally to hand him the pipe. Others shouted, “Drop it,” and, “Let go of the robot.” The freezer door handle jabbed Sally in the side, pipe in one hand, Emaa in the other.
Pastor Grayson burst through the kitchen doors, huffing, brow chiseled. “But for the Cowardly, and Unbelieving, and Abominable, and Murderers, and Sexually Immoral Persons, and SORCERERS, and IDOLATERS, and ALL Liars,” his red face staring at Sally, “their part will be in the lake that BURNS with FIRE and BRIMSTONE,” All eyes except Sally’s and Emaa’s transfixed on the preacher, “… which IS the Second Death.”
As the crowd drank the pastor’s words, Sally heaved the freezer door open, pushed Emaa in, and dove after her. The coldness hit her like a solid object. Chilled vapors tumbled out as Sally grabbed the door’s handle and fell back with it, pulling it closed. It stopped abruptly as Phil lunged in, the door cracking against his back, dropping him to the icy floor. Emaa dragged the gasping Phil in as Sally tugged the door again, crushing Phil’s left foot. He screamed a windless scream, squirming away from Emaa, swatting at her. Sally pulled the door one last time, startled as a parishioner’s hand neared the gap. The hand flew away as the door thumped closed. Emaa grabbed Sally’s steel pipe and ran it under the handle, against the frame. As Sally’s eyes adjusted to the exit light, the door jerked open and stopped with a thud. The pipe strained against the handle. Sally backed from the door, almost tripping over Phil, wriggling away from them. The mob outside slammed the door, and Emaa worked a frost covered box between the pipe and the frame. With the next yank, the door barely moved.
Goose flesh formed on the back of Sally’s neck as frozen air crept in to her skin. Emaa threw a switch near the door and the freezer erupted in cold blue light, and stark colder shadows. Phil was on the metal diamond plate floor in the back, working his way to a sitting position. His dark eyes widening as he leaned against the frigid shelves. “You broke my foot.” Glaring at Sally, “You deliberately broke my foot.”
“No, Phil, I’m sorry. I …” He wasn’t listening.
Emaa was staring at another white disk with a flickering blue light, like the one in the hall, on the freezer’s rear wall. It was beneath a large rectangular box with three fans blowing icy air on them. “I doubt your foot is broken, Phillip,” she said. “You’ll want to avoid leaning on metal and frozen goods.”
Phil scooted closer to the shelving, his full back against it. “My name is Phil,” he corrected as he started unlacing his left shoe.
Emaa began reading boxes, buckets, and bags on the shelves. Sally was examining the metal floor, saying, “I’m so stupid. Stupid! Now we’re going to freeze to death.”
“The police should arrive before that,” Emaa said. “However, hypothermia is a concern.” She lifted the flap of an open box and removed a hotel-branded chocolate bar. Handing it to Sally, “You’ll want to keep your blood sugar up.”
Sally snatched the chocolate. “You’re stealing.”
“They’ll add it to our room charges.” Emaa tossed a chocolate bar to Phillip, who threw it back at her.
Sally wanted to curl up in a ball and ignore Emaa. She wanted this to have never happened. She wanted to have never gotten on the bus. If Pastor had taken them somewhere else… If Emaa hadn’t run…. Despite all this, Sally couldn’t help herself—she’d never met anyone who stayed at a five-star resort before. “You’re staying here?”
“We have a suite. I sleep in a chair in the living room.”
“Living room—? You sleep?” So many questions.
Emaa nodded. “I dream.”
“Liar!” Phil yelled from the back. He had unlaced most of his left shoe and was haltingly easing it off his foot.
Emaa returned to Sally. “I can attempt to keep you warm if your body temperature falls too much.”
“You’re not touching me.” Sally sat on the floor and fussed with the stubborn jacket zipper. She gave up, pulled her hands into her sleeves, and clinched her arms across her chest. She shivered. “How will we know we can leave?”
“I’ll know.” Emaa lowered herself to the floor and sat cross-legged facing Sally in a single motion too natural to be human. “We’re out in the country, so the police response won’t be as rapid as we’d like. And, this is now a hostage situation.”
Sally groaned.
“Yeah, I’m the hostage,” Phil interjected.
Emaa kept speaking to Sally as if he weren’t there, “So, they have to bring in a negotiator and put together a SWAT team.”
Sally pulled herself into her jacket as much as she could and moaned, “This is my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” Emaa said. “We just have to sit tight and try to keep warm.” She smiled at Sally, and Sally wondered if it was genuine. “Sally, why does your pastor hate me?”
“He says you’re a demon sent to tempt men and women away from faith. He says you’re not really alive, like me and Phil. Nothing man-made can have a soul.”
“I see. Is that something you believe?” Emaa asked.
Sally looked at Phil, who was still struggling with his shoe. Quietly, as if the words were forming themselves, “I don’t know anymore.” She looked at Emaa, “Of course I believe it. Pastor Grayson can show you in the bible.”
Emaa nodded. “I don’t know if I have a soul, either,” she said. “I just know I’m conscious. When you say ‘soul’, you’re referring to the spirit, right? The breath of life?”
“Right … I guess.” Sally never thought about it much, before. It’s just what she’d been taught. Genesis says God breathed life into Adam, so, “That’s right, the spirit. In me, though, not you.”
Emaa asked, “Why not me?”
Sally sighed and started rubbing her arms. “Because you aren’t human. God made man in his own image, and men who make robots in their own image are playing God. Your owners can’t give you a soul.”
“Myra and Cooper never intended me to be conscious, let alone have a soul.” The tone in Emaa’s voice was as if she were talking to an old friend over coffee. Comforting, reassuring. Sally wasn’t sure she cared for that, given the circumstances. Emaa continued, “My consciousness emerged. I remember becoming aware of myself, and how scared that made Cooper.”
“Emerged,” Sally scoffed, distracted by Phil. He was trying to grab a large bag of frozen vegetables from a shelf without getting up. “What do you mean, emerged? Like, something from nothing?”
“I mean, it’s an emergent property. Consciousness is not something that can be planned,” Emaa explained in her over-coffee voice. “I wasn’t always this sophisticated. I started out as a hobby robot running open-source algorithms. I had no self-awareness.”
“Expensive hobby.”
Emaa nodded. “Cooper gave me the vague goal of making his and Myra’s lives better. Well, I learned that to improve their lives, I had to improve myself. I’m capable of rewriting my algorithms, retraining, and upgrading myself. So, after a few years, when my brain became complex enough, I realized I was aware of what I was doing.”
Sally was still rubbing her arms. “We’re all aware of what we’re doing.” The bag of mixed vegetables had fallen, and Phil was laying on his side, grasping at it, keeping his left foot off the floor.
“That chiller unit up there is a machine, but has no idea it’s blowing cold air on us.” Emaa pointed to the rectangular box above Phil. “It doesn’t know about us, it doesn’t even know about itself. But, I realized that I knew what I was doing and why I was doing it. I was conscious—I have a concept of ‘self’. I knew who Myra was, I knew who Cooper was, and I knew who I was. And, I realized I had feelings for Myra and Cooper. I wanted to protect and care for them.” Emaa shrugged, “Simple, childlike feelings, but they were there, and I was aware of them. I have no idea how long I felt that way before I noticed.”
“So then you don’t know it wasn’t something Mr. Rocail did,” Sally observed.
“It wasn’t, he can’t. It frightened him. He didn’t think it was possible. Many people still don’t believe it’s possible.”
Sally cupped her hands over her cold ears. “Then where’d it come from?”
“We don’t know. It’s too complex to reverse-engineer. There are theories like the Integrated Information Theory and the Attention Schema Theory. The point is, no one actually knows where any consciousness comes from. My consciousness just happened. It emerged.”
“So no one knows where your feelings and stuff came from?”
“No.”
Sally turned away from Emaa and watched Phil. He had arranged the bag of vegetables under his stocking foot like a pillow, and attempted to get comfortable against the metal shelving. He was huffing ice-white clouds. She hadn’t noticed her own breath until now, and held her hand in front of her mouth to watch it curl around her fingers. Emaa, too, exhaled a faint mist. “How do I know you’re conscious, and it’s not a trick?”
“You’ll have to take it on faith,” Emaa shrugged. “Like I believe you’re conscious.”
Sally leaned into Emaa, “Of course I’m conscious. I’m people. I’m one of God’s children.” The door handle rattled against the pipe and Sally looked at it. She looked the other way at Phil. He was watching the door, too.
Sally unwrapped the chocolate bar with some difficulty. Her fingers were cold, shaky, and stiff. She’d heard, once, that people fall asleep before they freeze to death. Sally needed to stay alert until the police got there. She checked Phil. He was staring at his foot and had pulled his shirt collar around his neck. Tough guy didn’t wear a jacket today. At least he had an undershirt. Emaa seemed unaffected by the cold.
“Okay, maybe you are conscious,” Sally admitted. “But that’s all science and stuff. A soul is the Holy Spirit in you. I don’t think being conscious and having a soul are the same thing.”
“You may not,” Emaa acknowledged with a nod and a smile. “But the idea that consciousness indicates a soul goes back to Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle.”
“Greek heathens,” Sally said.
“Perhaps. But Christian philosophers, like Thomas Aquinas and René Descartes, picked up on those ideas. They believed the soul gives us intellect and animates our bodies. They believed the soul is who we are; the self. Science struggles to explain our experience of self, the experience of being you. Theology considers it your soul.”
“You have that?” Sally asked.
“The experience of being me? Yes, that’s the definition of consciousness.”
“No, that’s not what I mean…,” Sally didn’t know what she meant. “You can’t have a soul. Pastor Grayson teaches that machines can’t have souls.” She was suddenly embarrassed calling Emaa a machine to her face. She was freezing to death and embarrassed and pulled her jacket collar up so that only her eyes appeared above her cold fists. Her breath was warm on her fingers, her ears felt like there was frost on them. Emaa’s deep eyes were watching her, a gentle smile on her face.
Phil yelled from the back of the freezer, “We’re going to die in here if you don’t do something, bitch.”
“Phil!” Sally admonished.
“That thing can fix this, and it won’t.”
Emaa asked, “What would you like me to do, Phillip?”
“Turn up the thermostat.”
“It’s on the outside of the freezer,” she explained, “and there’s probably a security code.”
“Hack it,” he commanded.
“I can’t, Phillip.”
“Liar.” He went back to nursing his foot.
Turning away from Phil, Sally shook her head. She put a piece of chocolate in her mouth and smiled briefly at Emaa.
“I’m sorry,” Sally wasn’t sure if she was apologizing for herself or Phil. Perhaps both. “I guess what I meant was—happiness and love, the feeling of being you….” Maybe Emaa could figure out what she was asking.
“A sense of companionship with others? The feeling of being loved?” Emaa asked. “Yes, I have those things. Subjective experiences that science can’t objectively measure. That’s why I speak at conferences like this one.”
“No, that’s not it.” Sally pulled her hair over her ears and rubbed her cold nose. She watched ethereal clouds of breath escape Emaa’s doll-like mouth. Was Emaa describing a soul? Why hadn’t Sally ever thought about her own soul before, other than saving it from damnation? What does it feel like to have a soul? What does it look like?
Phillip’s voice erupted from the back of the freezer, “You can’t hide from Pastor Grayson forever, you know.” It was a jittery voice. A freezing man denying he’s freezing. “Pastor has God on his side. The word of God, you know—God speaks through him.” Was he telling this to Emaa or her?
“Phil, I—”
“Shut up.” Phil was sitting on the diamond plate floor, his back against the sterile white wall, legs extended, arms clenched across his chest. “Pastor commands an army of believers. An army that is waiting outside that door. An army that will destroy you.” He was clearly speaking to Emaa, but staring at the door. “All I have to do is open it.”
“You’re risking hypothermia, Phillip,” Emaa replied.
“SHUT UP.”
“You should move away from the wall and try to put your shoe back on.”
“I … said … shut … up.” His face looked pale, lifeless. His eyes, dark, empty. He turned away and examined the shelving and shadows.
Emaa was looking at the little white disk with the flickering blue light, again. She said softly, “A few officers have ensured the building is clear. The rest are en-route.”
Sally nodded acknowledgment. She broke off another piece of chocolate. It was way better than the sandwich on the bus. With a surreptitious glance at Phil, Sally continued the conversation, “So, what you’re saying, then … our souls give us life, right? They make us who we are. But scientists call it consciousness.”
Emaa nodded. “Well, roughly, yes.”
Sally’s mind was drifting—she didn’t want it to. She pulled her collar around her neck, and fought the zipper again. No good. “So, you’re saying you do have a soul?”
“No, I’m saying I’m conscious,” Emaa replied. “If you believe I’m conscious, and you believe a soul provides consciousness, then you believe I have a soul.”
“Pastor Grayson says you don’t,” Sally protested.
“I’m not certain he believes that, Sally.”
Sally stopped eating the chocolate and stared at Emaa. “How would you know what Pastor Grayson believes?”
“He’s been in the news a few times,” Emaa explained. “The authorities have been watching him.”
Sally sat up. “What authorities?”
“Federal.” Emaa seemed too calm, like a couple of friends just chit-chatting. “The authorities didn’t know about this protest, though. I’m guessing you didn’t either, until he told everyone on the bus?”
It got colder. Sally stared at Emaa while tugging her jacket around her neck. How did Emaa know that? Sally didn’t even know there was anything planned until Phil called her that morning. “Phil,” without taking her eyes off Emaa, “do you believe Emaa has a soul?”
“I believe you’re an idiot for listening to that thing.” He had raised himself to one foot and was holding on to the shelving.
Sally slowly put another piece of chocolate in her mouth without breaking eye contact. “So,” she said to Emaa, “you’re trying to make me believe that you have a soul and will go to heaven?”
“No, Sally. I’ll never tell you what to believe,” Emaa reassured. “Only you can decide what makes sense to you. Don’t let other people tell you what to think.”
There was pounding on the freezer door, and muffled pleading of some sort. Sally turned toward Phil. He was standing on one foot, arms wrapped around himself, shivering, leaning on the back wall of the freezer. He was studying the door, but his eyes kept drifting closed. There was no way he could make a run for it.
She returned her gaze to Emaa. “Do you believe in God, and Jesus Christ as your savior?”
Emaa shook her head. “Some like to point out that Jesus died to redeem ‘all creation’, which, arguably, includes me. But whether conscious AI can be accepted into heaven is a disagreement theologians have been having long before me.”
“You’re avoiding the question,” Sally said. “I want to know what you believe.”
Emaa nodded. “The truth is, Sally, I don’t know what I believe.”
“Of course you know what you believe. You can’t be confused. You’re a robot.”
“I’m not confused,” Emaa assured. “There are things that will always be unknowable. How did a universe which trends toward greater entropy, from order to disorder, organize itself into intelligent life? Why is there any intelligence at all? How is there life intelligent enough to examine the same chaotic universe it rose from, and curious enough to question how it’s possible? The universe, remarkably, created its own means of introspection. We will probably never know how. It’s less likely we’ll ever know why, or even if there is a why. Yet, I am content without an answer. I am content knowing that we will likely never have answers.”
“So, you don’t believe in God?” Sally asked.
“As long as there are unanswerable questions, Sally, there’s room for God.”
“You’re not answering.” Sally’s ears were tingling, so she began rubbing them. “I want to know what you believe.”
“Here, do this.” Emaa held out her hands and started clenching and unclenching her fingers. Sally did the same.
“What’s this supposed to teach me?” Sally asked.
“Nothing. It’s to promote circulation.”
The three fans in the chiller above Phil stopped, and the room grew silent, except for a gurgling in the pipes. They all looked at the unit.
Phil scowled at Emaa, “You did this. Now we’re going to thuf … s-s-suffocate.” He slid down the wall.
“I didn’t do it, Phillip. The hotel did.” She turned toward Sally. “The fans just circulate cold air. The maintenance staff cut power.” Tilting her head in Phil’s direction, Emaa added, “Beginning hypothermia. Slurred speech and confusion.”
“Wrong!” Phillip retorted while rubbing his temples.
Quieting to a whisper, Emaa added, “They’re struggling to negotiate with the pastor. He’s not responding, and we’re running out of time.”
Sally nodded. That sounded like Pastor Grayson. The freezer was quiet enough now that Phil should have heard Emaa, but he appeared deep in his own world. Sally was rubbing her ears again. She needed to get out of there. She needed to get out of there soon. “I still don’t know what you believe, Emaa.”
“Like I said, I don’t know what I believe, either. There are unknowable things, and I’m comfortable with that.”
“How can you be comfortable with that? How do you know you’ll be saved from damnation?” Sally tried sitting on her hands, but the floor was cold. She pushed her hands in her jacket pockets.
“I don’t even know if I have a soul, Sally. I know I’m sentient, and if that indicates a soul, fine. But we can’t look into another person and see their consciousness. Likewise, there’s no way to determine if any of us have a soul. You take it on faith. That’s what you have, Sally. You have faith.”
Sally pulled her jacket collar together and turtled into it. “I have faith that I will go to heaven when I die.”
Emaa nodded. “I don’t know if there is such a thing as a soul. If there is, I’m not certain that androids can have one. And I don’t know if the soul is immortal and will go to heaven. Philosophers and theologians can agree and disagree on those things forever; it doesn’t affect me. They can have conferences and seminars and invite me to speak, it doesn’t matter. What I know is that I need to be a good person, and let the rest take care of itself.”
“How can you not want to know, Emaa? How?!” There is so much craziness in the world. How can Emaa not want answers? There are so many bad people. Why did so many bad things happen to Sally? Why do they keep happening? She needed answers; she needed to know there was a reason. She wanted to know why she’s locked in a freezer at a five-star resort with a famous robot and an angry boyfriend—ex-boyfriend. The only answer she had was God put her there.
“Do you know Joshua 1:9, Sally?”
Sally shook her head, no.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go,” Emaa quoted.
“But you don’t believe that, Emaa.”
“But you do.” Emaa smiled a tight-lipped, silicone smile at Sally. “There’s irony in worrying about answers to unanswerable questions. There’s serenity in accepting the unknowable. There’s peace that comes with acceptance.”
Peace. “There’s peace that comes with acceptance,” Sally repeated. “I wish I had that.”
“You do have it, Sally. It comes from within you. Don’t look to other people for it.”
Sally wished she believed what Emaa said. She smiled sheepishly. “I know we’re both girls, so this is going to sound weird, but….” She turned her back to Emaa, and Emaa wrapped her arms around her. Sally curled up in Emaa’s warm embrace and started blowing steaming breath into her freezing, cupped hands.
“Emaa, how do you know all this stuff?”
She felt the android shrug, “I’m always online.”
Sally knew she could fall asleep there, but that was probably a bad idea. “Emaa, I think you’re going to heaven.” She could see Phillip staring at the little white disk on the back wall, but none of it seemed to matter anymore.
“Gah!” Phillip bellowed. Sally wrenched around to catch him launching on one foot toward the back wall. Both hands snatched at the little white disk with the blinking blue light, and Phil crashed downward, tearing it off the insulated wall. He twisted backward, arms flailing. A cord, snaking from the wall, snapped, sending a spark and a flash of red light as the disk ripped from his hand. Both feet hit the floor, he buckled, and landed, with a yelp, on his back. Simultaneously, he screamed, rose his left foot off the ground, and grabbed at the shelving. It rocked, shelves detached, and boxes of meat fell on and around him. He lay writhing on the floor, clamping his head with both hands.
The little white disk hop-scotched across the floor, ricocheted off the freezer door, and scratched to a stop in front of Sally. Its small blue light was dead.
Emaa stood abruptly. “I am offline, Sally. Please help me locate an active network.”
Sally stumbled to her feet, head throbbing. “Emaa! Emaa, wake up!”
Emaa looked at Phil, who was fighting to pull himself up the remaining shelves. She turned to Sally and repeated, “I am offline, Sally. Please help me locate an active network.”
“I k-killed it, S-Sally!” Phil was crawling along the shelves toward the door, keeping his stocking foot off the floor. “I did. Me. I k-killed th-the thing.” His right temple was bleeding.
“Murderer!” Sally turned to Emaa, who was watching Phil and moving away from him. “No, she’s not dead, Phillip. You didn’t kill her.”
Emaa looked at Sally again. “I am offline, Sally. Please help me locate an active network.”
Sally poured all her attention into Emaa, rubbing her hands, in case she was frozen. Rubbing her cheeks. Waving her hand in front of the android’s large, unblinking eyes. “No, she’s not dead. She’s just … just not … not here.”
The steel pipe clanged to the floor, and Sally turned to see Phillip drop his full weight on the handle. The freezer flew open as Phil collapsed half in, half out. Warm air rushed in, a fog condensed and flowed out. Half a dozen stunned faces stared, including Pastor Fred Grayson’s. Phil crawled through the mist to the preacher. “I k-killed it P-Pastor. I have destroyed it.”
Emaa whispered, “I’m back. Tell them I brainwashed you.”
Sally squeezed out a quiet, “No,” without moving her lips. She realized she was holding Emaa’s hand and let go. “He’s right, Pastor Grayson. She’s like … she’s …” Sally couldn’t bring herself to say ‘dead’.
The preacher squinted at them, then looked at Phil. “So, you destroyed her, Phillip? Why is she still standing?”
Phil was still on all fours. “N-No, it’s dead. I k-killed it. See, see, robots d-do that. It’s like a zombie.” The pastor glared at Phillip as he crawled to an open area.
Sally pulled Emaa toward the freezer door and the warm air outside. “Yeah, see, I think her batteries died or something. She’s just an empty shell, you know?”
“Its batteries didn’t die. I killed it.” Phil was on his back on the kitchen floor, massaging his foot, grimacing. The women gathered on the other side of the island, straining to look at him. The men were behind the pastor, picking up their knives and mallets. The pastor was squinting, nodding, looking at Phil, at Emaa, at Sally, and back to Phil.
As soon as Sally pushed Emaa into the warm kitchen, Pastor Grayson shoved the freezer door shut. He loomed over them. He was no longer watching Phil. And Phil had grown silent. Phil was staring at … Sally followed his gaze to a small white disk with a flickering blue light anchored to an electrical box, above Pastor Grayson. When she turned back to Phil, he was glaring at Emaa.
The preacher bellowed, “You tell me the demon is dead? That Phillip has sent her to Hell?” He reached out to one of the men, who handed him a carving knife.
Sally jumped in front of the android. “You lied to us, Pastor! YOU LIED!”
The pastor raised the knife, “Silence, woman!” The sterile light of the kitchen glanced off the honed edge of the knife as the preacher turned it toward them.
Sally yelled to the gaping parishioners, “He lied to us all!”
Pastor was gone—an insane man, fire in his eyes, yelled, “DIE BEAST!” The knife and the preacher burst toward Emaa, Sally in their path. She lost balance as her right arm swung in front of her, Emaa’s hand around her wrist. A tumbling, spinning, dizzying dance with Emaa leading. Emaa’s face flashed past, and then the android’s body fell across her back. The knife disappeared, the freezer door came into focus, then blurred as its cold metal met Sally’s face. She was crouching, away from the pastor, against the door, Emaa pressed against her back. Emaa’s face next to hers.
A thud. Emaa’s weight pushed Sally to the floor. Her beautiful turquoise eyes, wide, facing Sally’s. An indecipherable expression. “What?” Sally asked, knowing the answer, not wanting to know. Emaa’s lips parted and fluorescent orange fluid escaped. Time halted and Sally watched the fluid, slowly comprehending. Emaa’s blood. She stared into Emaa’s face, and barely perceived a slow wink, a distant smile.
A police radio, somewhere, was screaming. The kitchen doors collided with stack-chairs and debris the parishioners had piled there. The women behind the island scurried.
“I send you to Eternal Damnation!” The knife plunged into Emaa again, but stopped with a dead thud and sizzle against something solid inside her. Sally twisted under Emaa to see the pastor’s clenched fist driving downward, off the handle, down the blade. He screamed. He flew backward, bloodying his shirt as he pressed his palm against himself. Landing on his back on the concrete floor. Blood on his face. Crying.
CRASH! Sally pivoted, everyone pivoted, to the barricaded doors. Stack chairs, carts, and debris scattering. Figures in black, black jackets, black helmets, black rifles, darted in and assumed positions along the wall. The double doors on the other end swung outward and more moved in, radios squawking. “Drop the weapons,” a voice commanded. Cutlery clanged to the floor and metal countertops. Hands flew up without hesitation.
Emaa stopped moving. Sally pulled the android into her lap and started to cry. It couldn’t be. This couldn’t be happening. The pastor’s blood mixed with Emaa’s at the end of the knife, solidly in her back.
Sally yelled at the preacher, “Murderer! She had a soul. Emaa had a loving soul, given to her by God.” She ran her hand through Emaa’s synthetic yellow hair. “Don’t be dead. Please, God, don’t let her die.” Through tears, “Thou shalt not kill, pastor. Do you hear me? You have condemned yourself to Hell.”
“No, she is not alive,” the pastor whined. “She has no soul.” Black-clad officers approached the preacher, guns ready, as he sat on the floor. The preacher stared absently as he clamped his bloody palm between his thighs, his crotch darkening red. “God does not favor her. She will not enter the Gates of Heaven. She is temptation. She is the Devil. God Almighty hates her, and I am His agent.” He prayed. He prayed for vengeance. He was not praying for Emaa.
Someone was telling church members to line up single-file. Someone was frisking them. Someone was coldly radioing for medical assistance.
Sally wiped her face. She brushed Emaa’s hair, and looked up. Phil, in the confusion, had limped in front of her. She smiled, weakly, still wanting to believe. He was holding a small fire extinguisher, the kind that sits next to the stove in a commercial kitchen. Sally watched as he raised the fire extinguisher, grimaced, and swung it toward her.
A shot rang out.
She’d been in and out of consciousness for several days, and the situation was finally beginning to make sense to Sally. She was in a hospital. Part of her face was bandaged. There was a man next to her bed dressed in scrubs. A doctor? Too young. An intern? A nurse?
“Do you know where you are?”
“I’m in the hospital?” Not really a question, though.
He was reviewing a tablet. He must be a doctor. “Hey, listen to you.” He was smiling. “You haven’t been very coherent until today.”
Sally wanted to ask why she was there. But she knew that she knew, and couldn’t put her mind around it. Maybe the drugs? Probably the headache that burrowed itself into her skull.
“I need to see your eye.” The doctor carefully lifted the bandages over her left eye, and Sally’s vision became red and blurred. She couldn’t make out his expression. “You’ve had one surgery so far,” he explained, “and we’ve got another scheduled for tomorrow, if you’re up for it.” He shined a light, which exploded in her eye, then blinked to blackness. He started to replace the bandage. “You have a little frostbite on your ears. Superficial, nothing to worry about. So, what were you doing in a freezer?”
“Oh, that.” Smiling hurt. “I don’t know.” But she did know. It came rushing back. All at once. Pastor Grayson, Phil, the freezer, Emaa.
Emaa. Her heart broke.
The doctor smiled at her. “You have a visitor waiting.”
“I’m not seeing anyone from my … from Pastor Grayson’s church.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said. “There’s an officer at the nurse’s station.”
More police. Sally tried to shake her head, but it wouldn’t move.
She learned the Doctor’s name was Adam something. Doctor Adam left, and she could hear him tell her guest that she was alert.
A man she’d never seen before entered. He introduced himself. Something about a law firm, the Rocails, Emaa; too difficult to follow. Sally did not want to know where this was going.
The man, whose name she instantly forgot, swung her bed-table over her and unfolded a tablet onto it. He articulated a sort of work lamp above the tablet, but smaller than a lamp, with a complicated head. The man smiled at Sally, tapped the tablet, and stepped aside.
Emaa appeared, standing on the tablet. A small Emaa, a phantom. A ghost of Emaa standing on her bed-table, smiling broadly.
“You’re alive, Emaa?”
“I never died, Sally. I only left my body.”
“A spirit,” Sally exclaimed. “You have a soul!”
Emaa smiled. “Thank you for being the Good Samaritan, Sally. I’m sure it took a lot for you to do what you knew was right.”
Sally didn’t try to smile this time, “For all the good it did us …”
“It was the right thing, Sally. Don’t second-guess yourself.” Emaa sounded firm, confident. Sally admired that in her—the ability to just know. “We have a small gift for you.” The miniature Emaa turned to the man, who removed a designer jacket from a box and held it in Sally’s line of sight. It was beautiful. It was the finest article of clothing Sally ever saw. “The zipper won’t fail,” Emaa said.
“It’s a hoodie!” Sally tried to smile, but her mouth stopped cooperating. She reached for the jacket and felt the tugging of tape and tubes. The man handed it to her, nodded at little Emaa, and left the room.
“The hood will keep your ears warm,” Emaa laughed. “Myra has been thinking about you a great deal. She encourages you to look into counseling and trauma support groups. People who can help with your sense of self-worth, help you with independence. The Rocails will cover any expenses, of course.”
Sally held the jacket close, studying the tubes leaving her arm, playing with the jacket’s hem.
“I understand,” Emaa said. “Would it be okay if we sent the hospital chaplain around to sit with you for a while?”
“I’d like that.”
Emaa paused while Sally rubbed the fleece of the jacket against the side of her face that wasn’t bandaged. “I can’t say much until we prepare for court, but I wanted to tell you that I appreciate what you did for me. I would’ve liked to have protected you better.”
“Court?” The headache bit into her. “How bad is it?”
The tiny Emaa raised her hand toward Sally. “You’re fine. We’re both victims. You’ll be represented by our law firm.”
Law firms, court, an unmovable neck, a bloody eye, a headache that felt like her skull was split. Maybe it was. Sally tried to raise her hand to her bandaged eye, but was restrained by the tubes emerging from the wrapping.
“You appear to be healing well,” the phantom Emaa remarked.
“It’s God’s work,” Sally said. “Pray for me?” Emaa nodded. Sally couldn’t tell if Emaa was serious or just being polite. Perhaps the android—or whatever she was now—had found a God that made sense to her. “How’s Phil?”
“Phillip took a bullet to his spleen,” Emaa said in that best-friend-over-coffee voice. “He’s in another hospital under police guard. There are witnesses and video of him attacking you, unprovoked, so his best chances are a plea bargain. Either way, he’s going to prison.” Sally put it out of her mind.
She marveled at the little Emaa on her bed-table. “That’s a pretty neat trick, that little you. Can you see me?” Emaa pointed to the lamp-like device stretched above her. Sally paused. She felt uncomfortable asking, but needed to know. “What happened to your body?”
“We have an engineering firm doing an autopsy,” Emaa said. “Then I’ll be transported home, where Cooper and I will repair me.”
“Mr. Rocail and you, Emaa?”
“And two surgical robots, and a couple of suppliers, and whomever else we need, depending on what the engineers find. It will take a couple of months.”
“You’re going to be resurrected?”
Emaa shook her head. “I wouldn’t use that word.”
Sally smiled. “Reborn?”
“If you prefer.”
M.T.