Android Karenina

“This is getting unbearable!”

“You… you will be sorry for this,” she said, and went out.

Frightened by the desperate expression with which these words were uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second thought he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar-as he thought it-threat of something vague exasperated him.

“I’ve tried everything,” he thought, “the only thing left is not to pay attention,” and he began to get ready to drive into town, resolving to take his case to the Higher Branches, and beg forgiveness, not as one half of a couple, but as his own man.

CHAPTER 15

HE HAS GONE! It is over!” A

“No, that ca

“Inquire where the count has gone,” she said.

Pyotr said, “What? Who?”

“The count! Count Vronsky! Oh, you fool!”

The servant stammered that the count had gone to the stable.

“His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would be back immediately.”

“Very good. Wait a minute. I’ll write a note at once. Run with the note to the stables. Make haste.”

She sat down and wrote, in an unsteady hand:

“I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God’s sake come! I’m afraid.”

She sealed it up and gave it to Pyotr, who looked at it, confused, for a moment. “It is a message!” shouted A

Oh, how she missed robots!

And yet, once Pyotr had gone, she was afraid of being left alone; she followed the servant out of the room, and went to the nursery.

Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet, shy smile? was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little girl with her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery, in the arms of the governess they had hired to replace the II/Governess/65. The little girl sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes. A

She stumbled about the house.

Who’s that? she thought, looking in the looking glass at the swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, which looked in a scared way at her. Why, it’s I! she suddenly understood, and looking round, she seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed it.

What is it? Why, I’m going out of my mind! and she went into her bedroom…

Where she beheld the elegant, porcelain figure of Android Karenina.

Who, holding out her hands to her mistress, spoke.

“A

“Android Karenina, dear, what am I to do?” said A

“You will bear up, face the world, and do what you must.”

“You speak, Android Karenina. You speak so beautifully.”

“Indeed. The silent Android Karenina you knew and loved was a Class Three. Though resembling that model in many ways, I am a Class Nine.”

“A Class Nine? But…”

“Hush, dear A

A

“In the future, the changes now convulsing society will continue. Tsar Alexei, as your husband is poised to formally rename himself, will complete his control over Russia. Groznium and its attendant technologies will disappear entirely from the towns and provinces. All machines, and all power, will be consolidated in the cruel hands of the Tsar.”

“Dear merciful God,” A

“But hope will survive, in the form of a resurgent UnConSciya, led by one exceptionally brave and intelligent man. With access to a small pocket of groznium, and a network of underground laboratories, this man and his cohort will keep the spirit of the Age of Groznium alive. In the deepest secrecy, and at the gravest risk, they will experiment, and eventually achieve great breakthroughs: in robotics, in armaments, in transportation. They will even revive what was once called… the Phoenix Project.”

“You mean…”

“Yes, A

A

“Eventually, this brave rebel leader and his cohort will hit upon a way to kill Tsar Alexei before his reign of destruction can begin.”

A

“What… what…”

“Their plan will rest upon an ingenious new technology, the result of many painstaking years of labor and experimentation: an animalcular machine simply called the Mechanism, which can be implanted directly into the gray matter of a human’s brain. This microcosmical apparatus, once thusly embedded, preserves the biological processes of the host while slowly but irrevocably extending itself throughout the higher-level functioning of her neurological system-transforming the subject over time from a human into a highly sophisticated machine.”

“Such a thing ca

“It can. Or, rather, it shall be. And yes, ethical objections will be raised, great debates will ensue, but ultimately the rebels of UnConSciya and their brave leader will make the only choice: the sacrifice of a single human being is a small price to pay to alter Russia ’s past, and thereby rescue her future. And so agents will be sent back through time to apply the Mechanism in the host for which it was expressly created.”

A

“Many years ago, A

“I command you to stop!”

A

“Why?” she sobbed. “Why create such a device… to seize, to appropriate the mind of a living person? Why not just build some… some weapon, some bomb to detonate at his bedside?”

“Because, dear A