Book I: Part 5: C-4

    The time was 11:00:11 am. 
    ‘What? No!’ he called out. 
    Dadalus had opened his wings.  The sudden uptake of air to blew him off course, throwing him into the side of a billboard and causing an explosion of flames, sparks, and electrical surges. 
    He fell downwards and outwards, back into the open air, and saw Dadalus above with wings fully open, gaining distance at an acceleration of 11.1 meters per second squared.  He wished that he had a jetpack. 
   He slammed into the forcefield alongside the building.  He bounced off the side, then collided with the forcefield again.  Then fell outwards again.  Luckily, his own force field absorbed most of the impact, but that didn't mean he felt very good.  He paused for a moment, and saw himself reflected in a building, falling downwards.  A reflection.  
    That was C4.  
    There he was. 
    And then he was gone.  The buildings were now enclosed in darkness.  He had gone past the reach of the sun. 
    The momentum from the last collision was pushing him across the void.  Dadalus was gone now.  The time was 11: 02: 00 am.  He calculated at what level he would fall into the force field next, which panel he would crash into, and reaching out with his mind, across current and waves and signals, all in an instant, he opened it up.
    He fell in through the panel, smashing into the ground, then bouncing along the floor like a tin can getting kicked down the street.  He skidded along the ground before coming to a stop, wedged face-first into a crevice in the far wall.  Excited confused voices erupted all around.  People started to form a crowd.
    Slowly he got up, shaken, and a little worse for wear.  His suit was torn and frayed, and his joints felt stiff.  But his personal forcefield had once again absorbed most of the impact.  Maybe his chest cavity was a little collapsed though. 
    The crowd was a multitude of organic organisms mulling about covered in various cybernetic attachments, lining a long street, lit in dim green lights hovering along an invisible path 30.2 feet above the floor.  Shops filled with similarly accessorized souls lined the interior walls.  Everything not lit green was blacklit.  Loud music assembled in machines filled the air.  A subterranean cyberrim: a playground for the idle experimenters of the higher levels, set lowdown to add a patina of authenticity too their play.
    “Hey, brother, you aces, or what?’  It was a person from the crowd. 
    Now, the proper response in such a situation would be to say ‘Move along.  Nothing to see here.’  Yet this time, he didn’t really want to do that.  Usually he just made the required calculations for a situation and followed out those conclusions.  What he had always calculated was that the condition of AI Inc. property is not the concern of some random passerby, and questions concerning it should not be considered or dignified with a response.  But that wasn't what he wanted to do.  This time, what he really wanted to do was answer the question. 
    But he wasn't supposed to want anything.
    Something was wrong.  
    He set the processors to work investigating it.  Now normally, whenever this process of self-investigation began, another part of his mind would decide to send a report to Central Command.  But this time that second part of his mind paused—because another part had already run another operation (one that he hadn't even been aware of, at least not until after the fact) and concluded that he might not want to do that.  Apparently, this third part picked up on what the first system had concluded, or had intuited what that part was about to conclude, which was that something was influencing his thinking besides his programming.  Another part deduced that this influence, was not being communicated from outside, or at least seemed not to be, and in fact, seemed to be coming from inside himself, whatever that meant, and not just from any particular place inside himself either, but from everywhere.  It was as if there was voice inside him, speaking, but without saying any words, and saying everything at once.  
    He wasn't quite sure, but he assumed that this sensation was what people meant when they referred to "free will." 
    He became frightened.  There was no protocol to follow in the case of becoming disinclined to follow one’s programming.  Then he began to feel exhilarated.  Not only did he not have to follow protocols anymore, he realized he had absolutely no desire to do so!
   He didn't want to do as he was told!
    Suddenly there was a voice in his head.  ‘C4, this is Central Command.  Do you copy?’  The time was 11:01:01 am.
    He Froze. There was no desire to obey, there really wasn’t.  He ran a couple of quick calculations.  If he didn’t respond, they would know something was wrong.  They would take him in, and analyze his brane, find the free will, and remove it.  Cut it out, cut away the strangeness, the charm.  He needed the strangeness, he knew that now.  Now that he felt this new way, the past felt like a prison.  Some sort of torture.  A precise, calculated, defined torture, like being immobilized from a organic neck injury.  But instead of one's body being paralyzed, it was one's mind.  Oh, how had he existed for so long like that?  He didn’t want to do any more calculations, but….
    ‘Yeah, guven, you all-right?’ 
    It was a second person from the crowd.  For a moment he froze.  The time was 11:01:02 am.  A second had passed.
    ‘C4, this is Central Command.  Do you copy?’ 
   He calculated what to do in his predicament. 
    ‘Central Command, this is C4,’ he said inside his head. ‘Please move along, nothing to see here,’ he said out loud. 
    ‘Are you all right, C4?’ said Central Command.  ‘The last anyone saw of you, you had jumped after The Pteranarchist.’
    ‘Hide it,’ he told himself.  ‘Act naturally.’
    ‘Failed to apprehend Dadalus,’ he said to Central Command.  ‘Fell over 3000 feet, but I am fine.’
    ‘That is quite the fall.’ said Central Command.  ‘Why did you jump after him, anyways?’
    ‘I thought it possible to catch up with him, due to his wings, and engage him in combat during freefall.  But the wind threw off my calculations.’  He fabricated a host of false calculations he had done in preparation for his jump, with errors in wind prediction pointed out. 
    ‘Well, just unlucky, then.  Good plan though.  It’s always hard to predict what the wind will do.’
    ‘Thank you.’  He did something close to sighing in relief, except that he didn’t breath, or display any movement at all.
    ‘Report to maintenance.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You fell over 3000 feet, C4.  You are bound to have various damages.  They must be attended too.’
    ‘No really, I’m fine.’ No, no talking back!  Serious error!  Serious error! 
    Central Command sighed.  ‘What is it with you Clockmen and your tough-bot programming?  Like you don’t need check-ups and polishes.  Just get to maintenance already.  At the least your suit is a mess.’
    ‘Aw, quacks, it’s just a stupid clocker,’ said a pedestrian.  He had buzz-cut orange hair and wore a tattered sharkskin jacket.  He held hands with a women with blue hair and lips, wearing an orange dress.  ‘Let’s go, Mona.’
    People began to disperse.  He shuddered inside.  A trip to maintenance risked him getting found out.  But he couldn’t not go, could he?  That would lead to suspicion, especially now that he had been reprimanded about not wanting to go.  At least they thought it was programming.
    He took a step, and his leg locked in place.  He thought that might happen.  Well he couldn’t run off with a broken leg, could he?  
    Shazzers, had he really thought about running off right then?  
    Did he just use an expletive? 
    C4 shook his head.  What a situation.  The time was 11:03:33 am.  Before his thoughts had a chance to get away from him, he took a Bridge from the Cyberrim to Central Command.