In the Heart of the Iron Conundrum: Part Five

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

The first thing Jonah heard when he woke up was muffled voices. He was lying on a cot in a dimly lit room hardly bigger than a cupboard. There was an iron banded door with a sliding hatch at head height blocking his view outside the room. His neck twinged uncomfortably as he abruptly sat up, eyes darting around the tiny space he was in, realising he was in a cell.

'What happened?' he thought, feeling his heart quicken in anxiety. The only thing he remembered was that he’d got onto the Iron Will, and Briar… didn’t. The sound of the gunshot still rang true in his mind, a reminder of the danger onboard. He flinched slightly when a loud banging started up on his right.

“I demand to be released, you filthy, android-loving trash!” shouted a deep, angry male voice. Jonah listened to the sound of footsteps approach his cell and walk past, stopping just to the right of his door. There was a metallic sliding sound, and the banging sound stopped.

“You have no right to hold me in here. What you’re doing here will end the world!” shouted the angry man. “These androids, they’ll-”. The man suddenly stopped speaking as the lighting flashed sporadically, his words replaced with a choked stuttering sound.

"Hey! Leave him alone!" Jonah shouted, surprised by the volume of his own voice, given his usual calm tone.

The stuttering sounds stopped, ending with a muffled bang. Harsh clinical light suddenly poured into Jonah’s cell as the sliding hatch opened. A pair of cerulean eyes peered through, framed by an oval pair of black glasses.

“Ah, Jonah Model 005. You’ve booted up. I’m surprised, I thought your hard reset would’ve left you incapable of speech like your previous models. Fascinating. I’ll make a note of that,” said the woman, looking down and tapping something beyond where Jonah could see. Jonah frowned, brushing his dreadlocks back with one hand.

“I don’t understand. Where am I?” Jonah murmured.

“Mhm, amnesia. Your most common symptom of a reset. Anything else?” asked the woman.

“Symptom? Am I sick?”

“Hmm. Fascinating. You have a concept of physical well-being. I wonder if the Briar Model’s decommission encouraged your programming to reassess the import of well-being.”

“Wh-… who are you? What did you do to Briar?!” The woman looked up, eyebrows raising. She tapped a few times on the door, smiling.

“I am Dr Bardot. I’m here to… cure you. Now, tell me. How did the death affect you? Describe to me how you feel,” Bardot mused.

“How… I feel? How I feel?! Get away from me, monster!” Jonah shouted, rushing forward.

Dr Bardot moved back, which was exactly what Jonah wanted. With the scientist out of the way, he could see more of the room: screens mounted on the walls of a long and thin room, a few more scientists in long white coats, two guards, and a closed sliding door operated by a keycard. Bardot then slid the hatch closed on the door with a sigh.

“Aggression. Must be the new bodyguard background. I’ll make a note to tweak that later,” Bardot muttered, walking away. Jonah nodded, and sat down, beginning to tug at a loose thread on his outfit. He didn’t understand much of what was going on. But he did understand how to get out of sticky situations quickly, given he’d been on the run from the authorities for coming up on a year. First things first, he needed tools, starting with a way to open locked windows.

. . .

Trixie paced back and forth in her cell. She’d listened to an angry sounding man get electrocuted, and the conversation between Jonah and the scientist Dr Bardot. She remembered walking into a room with Jonah, and then nothing but blackness… blackness and binary code. It was an inconceivable thought that she wasn’t human. But she’d wrote articles with stranger storylines than that she was seemingly part of. Perhaps this situation is exactly that: a story. And if there were any truths to Trixie’s existence, she was excellent at unravelling stories. Or that was how she was programmed, she thought.

First line of questioning was the how. How did she get here? She remembered being in her office in New York, working for the Wall Street Journal. Her manager gave her the information on the Iron Will and her undercover mission to get onboard. But she simply couldn’t recall her manager’s name, or even how she got to France and the hotel she was staying at the day before the Charity Ball was due to start. Therefore, she must have started in France, most likely ‘booting up’ in the hotel. Okay. That freaked Trixie out a bit.

Second was the why. That seemed to have both a simple and complex answer. Simply put, she was part of an experiment. Dr Bardot’s words to Jonah seemed to confirm that. But then there was the more complex answer involving androids seemingly ‘ending the world’, or so that’s what the angry man said before he went silent. It was unlikely Earth was going to end due to some robots in fancy skin. So, logically, the best answer to why Trixie was in the situation she was, was because she was an android being programmed to be a normal, functioning member of human society. Woof, that was a hard pill to swallow. But it’d make a great story if she managed to get off the train and share it with the world. Perhaps her story could help someone, anyone.

Thirdly, and most importantly, was the what. What was Trixie going to do to get out of this cell? She honestly couldn’t think of anything useful to do. She was a journalist; her skillset was getting herself deep into a storyline and finding out all the information she needed to write the best story. Trixie finally gave up her pacing and flung herself down onto the cot with a sigh. She winced as her arm flung down on a sharp section on the wall, tearing at her skin. She automatically covered her wound with her other hand, and then paused. Her arm had hit a small vent that was level with the lip of her cot. Flipping around on her stomach, Trixie got a better look at the vent. She could see into another cell, one that held a dark-skinned muscular man slowly peeling strips of thread from the cot he was sat on. She recognised the man’s dreadlocks.

“Jonah!” Trixie whispered, smiling as the man jumped and whirled around, frantically looking around for the source of the voice. “Down here. The vent! No, more to the left. Yes! Hello!”

“Who are you?” Jonah whispered, coming up to the vent and crouching down.

“It’s me! Trixie! We came here together. What’re doing?”

“…Trixie? Never heard of a Trixie,” Jonah muttered, moving back to his cot and continuing his thread pulling.

“R-right, well that doesn’t matter. We need to get out of here! Better to work together, right?” Jonah just shrugged, trying his best to ignore the strange woman.

“You know, that’s not a very good attitude to have. What, is your nickname Sir Shrugs-A-Lot?” Jonah looked up with a pained look on his face. Shrugs. Briar called him that. Why was he being so heartless yet again in the face of someone in need? That wasn’t right. It was then he decided that he was going to get out of here, find Custard, Pickles, and Trucker, and get them off the train. It’s what Briar would have wanted.

“What’ve you got?” he asked.

“A hair slide. We get out of these cells and find a window and get out. But there won’t be a window in this room. It’s a secret room, right? We might need a lockpick to get doors open!”

“They’re operated with keycards and touchpads. No locks. But it’d be a good weapon, sharpen it and then give it to me, we might need it.”

Trixie didn’t like the sound of that, but it was all she could do to help. Using her own sleeve to muffle the sound of her hair slide being slid repeatedly over the edge of the cot, she began to make a very makeshift shiv.