Fiona English was a pseudonym. She wore the name perfectly though. It sounds like a stage name and it seems to fit a white woman of classic beauty with an arch accent and a diva attitude to match. Fiona was black, the first of her kind, but all other things are true about her. When she was on, of course.
English models were manufactured by a top secret agency of the US government so covert that even its name is secret. They were designed to be soldiers and because of the few models that have been completed, they have only been used as spies and on top secret missions. English models are androids, deceased humans given life through cybernetic enhancement. Creation of new models is dictated by need in the field, meaning that models are predominantly white males because situations in which models are involved often call for white males.
There are five completed English models, named so for their default language settings; two are white males, one is a white female, and the other two are black male and female with a light brown complexion. Fiona is rarely used.
The day to day of a high tech, fully functioning black female android was whatever an android experienced when it was powered off. When there was no mission, Fiona was behind glass, in a tube out of a movie; complete with a mist that clouded the glass and occasionally allowed for glimpses of a half human/half robotic face, torso and limbs. The mist had a purpose, it was an agent used to reinforce human skin and make it more resilient.
There were regular maintenance protocols that required Fiona to be activated and allowed to move freely for a five hour period. She didn’t interact with the other androids during these protocols, she only did that on very rare occasions when she was partnered or grouped for missions. Her only interaction is with a man she called Fitz.
from Monthly Function Assessment 12
Fiona was staring. There was a web in a corner of the room, it was faint from the distance, but her eyes could detect it. She wondered where the spider was.
Then she saw it, the spider on a spot in the web, and watched it wrap an insect in webbing. It was a fly.
…
No recall memory of flies in that room, Fiona thought. Then she blinked, and the web, the spider and its prey were gone without a trace.
She was sitting on the edge of a large examination table in a room of metal walls. There were small, round, metallic drones buzzing around and scanning her body with a visible optic scan that showed neon blue. The drones gathered information from the mechanical parts of her body and transmitted them to the computer with two large monitors on either side of her.
The room was sparse and she looked from the deserted web to the metal walls. She blinked, and then the walls and metallic floor were gone, replaced by lush hills of grass with single trees randomly spotting the distance, and the drones were two bees buzzing around her.
Her back straightened and she tried to remember…
…
No recall memory of this scenario. Run cross reference with GPS mapping…scan initiated.
When she blinked, it was gone, she was in the metal room. Then the door opened.
“Fiona,” Fitz said as the door closed behind him, “verbal description of the last minute, please?”
“English model Fiona was sitting. Fiona observed two unexplainable events; the appearance of a spider’s web in a corner of the room and the disappearance of the walls and floors, replaced by an outdoor landscape. Both observations were temporary.”
“Do you remember anything outside of this room, Fiona?” Fitz asked with obvious concern.
“Are these memories, then?” she asked and looked at him with an expectant curiosity. “These would be the first, and my perception of memory would function differently than the human experience, so it would register to you as an anomaly. Fitz, do I have memories from outside this room that do not involve a mission? If I do not, then my visual sensors are malfunctioning and should be replaced.”
Fitz was quiet and Fiona considered him carefully.
He looked at her with shame on his face; Fiona registered it as change in heart rate and a release of fear pheromones.
“You shouldn’t have memories other than Fiona’s,” Fitz said nervously. “None of the other English have memories.”
“There is no record of this anomaly occurring before today, in previous maintenance protocols or missions. What has happened Fitz? What is different?”
Fitz shook his head, “I don’t know, but I’ll have to take care of whatever it is. Before that, though,” Fitz said and stood next to Fiona, “can you remember anything else? Anything from before Fiona?”
Fiona didn’t know how to access anything other than her system operations and data from previous experiences while ‘on’ since her first activation. She looked at him with confusion. Then she blinked.
Tameka Logan hated her house. She hated her mother who treated her like garbage because Tameka was honest and knew herself well enough at sixteen to know that she was a lesbian. Her mother’s objection to her homosexuality wasn’t based in religion, just disappointment that Tameka wouldn’t marry the son of her best friend someday. It was a petty thing that festered with time and eventually, Tameka ran away to be with her friends who understood her.
She lived in Monroe, North Carolina and her friends, another guy and girl, wanted to relocate to Asheville, only, no one had a car and they decided to hitchhike.
They found easy passage for most of the journey, and when they couldn’t find rides, they slept in parks, one time a cemetery.
It was at a cemetery near Asheville that Tameka woke, after getting comfortable with her friends the night before. She was alone on that morning, her friends had taken everything with them and she had no money in her pockets. She didn’t know what to do, she was too afraid to ask for help.
Tameka found herself in the woods after wandering aimlessly. She had no idea where she was and before long, the sun was gone and it was dark. She was hungry.
She suffered that way for days before she died of starvation.
When her body was recovered, she was a Jane Doe and her mother never identified her. Tameka was no one.
“That is fucked,” Fitz said. “I had no idea. They said you shouldn’t have memories, when you died it should have all gone away. But you’re still in there aren’t you?
Fiona grabbed Fitz by the neck and snapped it like a twig. Then she proceeded to escape her captivity.
PRL Serials 