AI - Alpha Part 50

Thomas knew it wasn't going to be easy. But given enough time maybe they would accept Alpha, or at least tolerate her. "No matter how much I love them, I can't live my life to please them."

"You're sure this is what you want?"

His gaze never wavered. "Certain."

A smile came to her, one slow and somehow amazed. "Then yes. I would like to go with you."

"Good." That one word held a world of emotions he couldn't express. She had said yes. She, who could have had any man.

"Yes, well, Thomas, we have to do something about these people hanging around all the time." She motioned in the direction where they had left the orderlies. "Guards, everywhere. As long as I'm stuck here, you have to stay some nights, too, without fake orderlies wearing those I'm-going-to-rip-out-your insides guns."

He had been having similar thoughts. "I'll see what I can do." He paused. "Alpha-"

"You have that look again."

"What look?"

"As if you're about to fall off a cliff. You never get it when you should, like if you really are about to go over the edge of something. It only comes at the strangest times, like when you want to ask how I feel about something."

Thomas felt his face heating. That had, in fact, been exactly what he had intended to ask. He ran his knuckles down her cheek. "I'll be seventy-three in two weeks."

"So?"

"It doesn't bother you that I won't take a forma body?"

"Of course it bothers me." She glowered at him. "So go on. Die. Leave me by myself after I go through all this trouble so I can be with you."

His face was doing that gentling thing again. "I'm not planning on dying for a long time."

"I'll hold you to that." Her voice softened. "Your age matters to me, Thomas, only in that it means I won't have you for long. But even if you changed your mind, it's too late. Your Air Force knows about the android. They'll have it soon."

He hadn't told her about the Alley's offer. He hadn't told anyone, not even Chang. "Then you'll take me as I am?"

"As long as you take me as I am."

He grinned at her. "Deal. Just remember, I break more easily than you."

"I won't forget." Darkly, she added, "I'll be a lot better bodyguard for you than those phony orderlies."

He took her hands. "You won't be here forever. Only until we clean up the mess Charon left."

She interlaced her fingers with his. "Thomas-"

"Yes."

"I'm glad you came today."

"Me, too."

He didn't know if he would ever come to terms with the idea that he could become like her. What

mattered most was that she wanted him as he was. He could live out his limited human life or he could rethink his decision in the future, but she would stay regardless, not for his youth or strength, but for him. To Thomas, that made her human.

Epilogue.

In November 2032, Alpha received political asylum.

In May 2034, the Supreme Court ruled that Turner Pascal was an American citizen. They sidestepped the question of his humanity by reinterpreting one word in the Const.i.tution. Just as historically "man"

had often been used for both men and women, so the justices extended the word "person" in the Const.i.tution to include someone like Pascal, who had been a citizen before becoming an EI and who pa.s.sed every Turing test he was given. It didn't solve the more complex problem of how humanity would draw the line between human and machine, but it established a precedent that set debates raging, for it gave someone with an EI brain the rights of a human being.

In July 2034, the NIA contained Charon's last EI in a fully independent mesh and ended his illegal operations.

In September 2034, Sam Bryton and Turner Pascal were married at a chapel in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

In February 2035, the Air Force released Alpha into the custody of Lieutenant General Thomas Wharington.

In April 2036, Thomas retired from the Air Force.

In August 2036, the United States government granted Sunrise Alley a status equivalent to a sovereign nation. The question of how to define a forma, however, remained unanswered.

In December 2037, at the age of eight, Jamie Harrows completed her first cla.s.s at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. She received an A in Principles of Biomechanical Theory.

In June 2038, Thomas and Alpha moved to rural Virginia. No one knew Thomas well enough to notice how healthy and young he appeared compared to six years previous, when he had nearly lost his life to cardiopulmonary arrest.

Had anyone asked, he would have simply said that love made a man younger.

THE END.