# Thomas Haas 

To anyone who wasn't one of the top experts on AI supersystems, the columns of symbols and numbers would have been gibberish.
Thomas stared at them, no longer seeing. He was supposed to be one of the top experts; mother expected it. Frag it. He tossed on his three-dee glasses and vegged out.

The light was fading when he got bored with the three-dee. The vastness of New Angeles spread out before him, the high-rises topped with a golden crown from the setting sun. A still picture, not moving, not heard, a postcard and monument to the greatest city in the world. Thomas thought about changing the view, throwing up a mosh pit or a war zone.

He headed for the cooler and grabbed a drink of Silo Blue. He tossed it back and stretched out his neck. His secretary sounded in his ear: Molly was calling. He told the secretary to take a message.
The voice went quiet.

He loaded up his wardrobe on the door, and flicked through his various options. Nothing to wear. He thought of hopping down to the waterfront, picking up something new. Maybe someone too. The whisper of the door made him turn around.

"Hi," he said, masking his surprise as Helen drifted through the door.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" she purred, her eyes a dead silver.

"Silver doesn't suit you" Thomas selected a platinum polyseer jacket and pulled open his closet. The coat was there, hanging on a hook. He picked it up and tossed it on. When he turned back to Helen, her eyes were a misty blue. "Does it suit met" he asked.

She draped a finger along her lips, and paused, as if thinking. *Almost perfect*, he thought. *She could pass for human*. The programming was really quite remarkable-he would know. "It doesn’t match your slippers.”

He kicked off his slippers and slipped on his loafers. "I didn't think mother would let you out of the lab."

"She didn't. This is our...little secret." She took a step toward him, her hands running along the form-fitting white mini dress that clung to her manufactured curves, a lone strand of blonde hair straying across her forehead. The quality of this model was high, the highest Haas-Bioroid had ever produced. Billions in neural nano-processers and synthetic flesh. The brain imaging alone cost about the same as a year’s supply of helium-3, Thomas realized he was thinking of Helen as "her,” as "she" not "it" A bioroid that can pass as a human.

He touched the PAD worn on his wrist and they were surrounded by a fire-lit beach, a thousand stars twinkling overhead.

"Never trust a bioroid with a secret;' he said, and he leaned into her, their lips almost touching, his hand cradling her face. With a deft move he grabbed the back of her brain case, and extracted the back-up mem chip. Helen went still, her red lips inches from his own, beautiful blue eyes unblinking, staring straight into his own.

"Okay mother, what are you up to now?" He took the chip over to his rig in the next room and commanded the system to run a diagnostic. It took a full 10 seconds to get the results. He stared at the screen for a long moment.

"Helen," he said, powering the model back up, "how about a nice little jaunt upstalk?"

***********************

The strobe lights were real. The Orange Room of The Castle Club was one of the most exclusive in the world; no androids allowed, under any circumstances. Thomas slid the chip out from the pocket of his polyseer jacket, turning it over and over again in his fingers. He was watching Helen out of the corner of his eye chat up some ugly old man at the bar, downing whatever was put in front of her without hesitation. Some woman came up to Thomas, came on to him, maybe. She whispered something in his ear. He barely noticed and she withdrew, looking hurt. It didn't matter.
There was a thought gnawing at the back of his mind. *A bioroid can pass as a human*. With Helen, the sky was the limit. So why did it bother him so much?

He pushed himself to his feet, and headed toward the bar. He stopped as Helen turned her gaze on him. He could barely see it anymore, the machine behind the smile. *Is she real?* She blinked, and for a split second he saw himself reflected in the silver of her eyes. Then he was gone, and she was human once again.

*A bioroid can pass as a human*. He grabbed at the back of his neck, digging his manicured nails into his flesh. They came away caked in flakes of skin. He breathed a sigh of relief. What a stupid notion. He flagged down a server-human, a human server-and ordered a drink,

*A bioroid can pass as a human*. But Thomas Haas was anything but stupid.

Time to get drunk.