Virus
Over a decade ago...

The facility was dark- it was after working hours as the old man finally emerged from his hiding place. It was supposed to be impossible for the security cameras to miss something, and, remembering this, the old man gave a bitter laugh, for he had designed what could possibly be his own doom. The hours toiling away at his computer screen had paid off- fortunately he had devised back doors in case something like this occurred. However, there was no choice- he had to evade his programs, his children, and save it. Creeping from his hideaway, the old man started to sneak across the hallway and into the storage room- where they were kept. Robots or humans, no one could tell. They were slaves of a sort- bound to their masters, bound to serve. It was they who the old man had created. They who guarded the facility- a multitude of spin-offs of a Virtual intelligence. And maybe, just maybe, one of them was alive. The old man walked across the room to the last server- much more modern that the others. 2196, it read. It was this that the old man had come for. Groping around the back of the server, his hand found a flash drive and deftly pulled it free, where it disappeared into the folds of his coat. Quickly, he stood up, and briskly strode out of the room- there was just one thing to do. What he had always done- code. The man plugged the flash drive into his laptop and instantly his fingers began to fly across the keyboard. Typing and typing and typing. Memories of the facility finally disappeared from the mind of the creature- now it could be innocent. They flew and flew away from the baby robot, and the old man hesitated. Sighing, he backed up the memories, encrypted them, and removed all traces of them from the robot. The USB suddenly flared a bright blue and faded again. After six hours, the old man’s job was done- almost. He carried the flash drive yet another room- this one filled with a myriad of strange machines. He riffled through the keys he had stolen and unlocked a cabinet, then stepped back to admire the contents. Inside, there was a body- a human baby, swaddled in a pink cloth with little happy faces on it, but not. A synthetic- the very first to grace the world of the humans of flesh and blood- and hopefully the only, for others would be used for nefarious purposes. Eva, he mused. She shall be called Eva. He held up the baby and fed the flash drive into its mouth. A little timer started to glow on its skin- 24 hours and counting until the child came alive. The old man smiled- his job was done. He strode out of the facility, with his children, the robots- searched endlessly for his figure, which had been wiped from their databanks. Now, he had only to give the child a normal life, and hope that it never discovered its heritage, which would certainly lead only to its death and nothing more. He drove away, a car in the otherwise silent night, as he started to think about how to integrate this human robot into the world… In fact, the baby numbly stared, unable to move due to its lack of activation, as plans were made, and the old man left for the final time…