In the Heart of the Iron Conundrum: Part Three

This is Part Three of a short sci-fi story.

Everyone had heard the gunshot from outside. The guests who had already gone to the lounge cart to sit and gossip around the fountain had sprung out of their seats. Some of them had charged to the nearest windows, peering out into the night to see what was happening. Some, rightfully so, ran out of the lounge cart, heading straight towards their rooms to take cover. Word got out quickly that a homeless woman had been caught trying to sneak onto the Iron Will and was shot outright, after it was said she’d been carrying a weapon. Trixie, who’d been listening in on various conversations in the lounge room before the gunshot, had even heard that the woman was apparently an assassin out to kill a certain Japanese engineer, according to the contract she was carrying in her pocket. Trixie wasn’t one to run from a good story, so she’d got all kinds of information out of several guests and attendants before returning to her own room to begin writing up some notes. She was glad that the Iron Will travelled smooth enough for her to move from person to person without falling over. She was sorry for whoever the woman who’d been shot. It wasn’t right, the injustice of her death. But she could at least bring light to her death and perhaps prevent anyone else from getting killed like that without a trial with the article she’d write about the Iron Will.

With these thoughts in her mind, Trixie returned to her room, so preoccupied that she almost walked past the scene laid out for all to see. Trixie did a double take as she walked past one open door that led into a private room for one of the guests. Lying on the ground, wires, and various cords and what looked like cooling fluid pooling out of her abdomen, sparks flying from her immobile form, was Cerule. Her dark hair was lying in a pile around her face, which was paused in a shocked expression. Trixie stood there, in the door frame, shocked, watching the sparks fly from the various broken features of the mechanical form before her. And then she screamed. Attendants and guests alike, already on high alert, found the source of the screaming, some of whom joined in with the cacophony. It wasn’t long before word got around that Lady Cerule Cartland had been murdered on the Iron Will, and that she was in fact an android, an artificial robot that had been made illegal across the entire world due to its potential danger to humans.

One of the attendants who’d been commanded to help cordon off the murder scene was Jonah. He’d arrived on the scene shortly after the guests who’d gathered to watch the spectacle had been ushered away to their own rooms. The Iron Will had paused on its journey, but all the attendants were working double time to keep the guests entertained and calm. Custard and Prickles had been moved to the kitchen to work on churning out as much food as possible, whilst Trucker had been pulled away to keep a running inventory of the cargo. When Jonah arrived at the scene, Lady Cerule’s body had been covered with a white sheet, although the sheet was slightly singed in places from where her body had released sparks from its mechanical parts. It’d been determined that she’d been stabbed multiple times, and displayed in the fashion she was found. Jonah began blocking off the entire cart with the help of four other attendants, watched over by three armed guards. He avoided looking at the guards too much, still shocked that they seemingly had permission to use their weapons at will. One of the guards was preoccupied trying to keep a petite woman in a purple gown from entering the cart. She kept waving a notebook around, frustration planted on her cherub face as she tried to explain she needed access to her laptop immediately. She wasn’t getting anywhere anytime soon, but Jonah had to at least admire her tenacity.

“Hey, you. Can you take these sheets to laundry?” asked a brown-haired female attendant as she pushed a basket of singed sheets into Jonah’s hands. “The android keeps burning them, and these are covered in something that doesn’t smell too great. Smells like an old car.”

Jonah grabbed the basket, looking down at the sheets and back to the attendant, nodding. He thought better than to ask where laundry was, so simply walked off towards the guard who was still dealing with the purple gowned woman.

“Hey! Hey, you, attendant man with the rocking dreads! What’s going on in there?” asked the woman, readying her pen on her notebook, pushing away the guard when they tried to take the pen away from her. “Is it true that the woman was an android? And that she was displayed after being murdered?!”

“I’m not at liberty to say, Ma’am. Now, please, excuse me, I must get this to laundry,” Jonah replied politely, gently pushing past the woman. He frowned a bit when she charged after him, grabbing the basket with one hand, jogging to keep up with him.

“Look. My name is Trixie, I’m a journalist. This isn’t the first death tonight; I know more about what happened outside. I’m convinced something isn’t right here, I feel it in my bones! Help me help the people who died. I-it isn’t right!” Trixie demanded.

“You know… what happened outside?” Jonah asked, walking slower to allow Trixie to keep up with him. She’d piqued his interest. Briar deserved better.

“Yes. I know a woman was shot. I know they said she had a weapon, yet one was never retrieved from her body. I also know she wasn’t human!”

That got Jonah pausing. He was about to push open an unlabelled door to see if he could find the laundry room.

“Wasn’t… human?”

“Wasn’t. Human. Another android!”

“But that can’t be right. How do you even know that?”

“Look, I’m a journalist. It’s my job. This is one hell of a scoop. Illegal android practice, murder of said androids. It’s something we should help stop!”

Jonah watched Trixie with a perplexed expression. Briar, an android? That couldn’t be the case. She was human. She acted human. He shook his head, pushing the thought out of his mind.

“No, that’s ridiculous. Now, Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I have laundry to do.”

With that, Jonah pushed open the door, and entered the room. It wasn’t the laundry room. Jonah was surrounded by consoles, computer screens, blinking lights, and people in white lab coats. There had to be maybe a hundred screens in this side room, each of which displayed something different. He saw a first-person view of someone washing up in the Iron Will’s kitchen. He saw a first-person view of someone comforting a crying woman in a private guest room. In fact, almost every camera was a first-person point of view, except for the security cameras that were mounted throughout the train. Trixie leant over Jonah’s shoulder, eyes wide. One man in a lab coat looked over at the open door and rolled his eyes.

“Dr Bardot, the Jonah model found his way to the console room. Again. I thought you’d reprogrammed it, so it didn’t have the pathing available to get here?” the scientist said, rubbing his balding head as he came over to Jonah.

Another scientist, a tall woman with long black hair scraped back into a ponytail, followed suit, holding a tablet.

“Cerule? But… you’re dead!” Trixie gasped when she saw the scientist who bore an uncanny resemblance to the murdered android.

“Interesting. The Jonah model has managed to change the pathing of Trixie too. It always was the more advanced version of our work. Strange how both can see the room too. Perhaps the unforeseen events of this evening with the trespasser have addled their circuits?” Dr Bardot said, leaning forward to look into Jonah’s eyes.

“Shall I shut them down?” asked the balding scientist.

“Usually, I’d say yes. This model is too clever for its own good. Disguised itself as an attendant this time, too. But now… now we’re going to use the model, and Trixie too, to find this damn android killer before they ruin our whole operation.”

Jonah watched as Dr Bardot brought up a profile that has his own picture displayed next to his personal details. His entire history, his job, the false accusations against him, were all there. A story to make his life feel more real. A story to make him think he was human.