A knock at the door roused Old Man Aarons from his chair. He grumbled, rose to his feet, shuffled to the door, looked out the window, then grumbled again.
“Hey dad. Can I come in?” The woman asked.
“Y’ain’t my daughter.” Aarons spat. “Yer a damned android.” He flung open the door, pushed past the woman, and stared out at the landscape. What had been endless fields and rolling hills just a few years earlier were now sprawling suburbs and towers that pierced the heavens. “I’ain’t sellin’!” He shouted, shaking his fist toward the newly erected city. “Ya’ hear me?!”
The man stared critically at his visitor. “And you… You tell those bastards at the Greenbriar Corporation I intend to die in this house, ya’ hear? If they want me gone, they’re gonna hafta come finish the job themselves.”
The woman sighed. “Dad, please, no one wants to kill you. I’m here because your doctor called me. He’s worried.”
The man grunted.
“He says your paranoia about androids is growing. He told me that you accused him several times of being one when he tried changing your medicine.”
“It’s those bastards at Greenbriar… They replaced ‘im. They wanna start givin’ me poison.”
The woman remained patiently silent, and when she spoke, it was in a soft, understanding voice. “Dad, remember when you were young, how your grandparents thought the internet was evil? I remember you telling me that they refused to ever buy a computer, and they railed against you and your siblings for having one. Remember?”
The man grunted. “It ain’t the same.”
“It is the same, dad. Please, try to see it from my point of view. Androids have gotten very advanced in a very small window of time, and, well, you’re not exactly as young as you once were. Don’t you think that maybe your feelings toward them are similar to how your grandparents felt about computers? I mean, for Christ’s sake, they even have a name for it… Android Paranoia Syndrome. It’s common enough to have a name!”
“It ain’t real, and even if it is, I ain’t got it.”
The woman sighed. “Do you really think I’m an android.”
“Sent by the Greenbriar bastards, yes.”
“And what could they possibly gain in sending an android that looks like your daughter?”
“I dunno what those bastards have in mind. Maybe you’ll slip some spy device in my house. Maybe you’ll trick me into signin’ away my rights.”
“If I were an android, wouldn’t I try to force my way inside?”
The man barked a laugh. “Ya’ know damned well that androids have legal restrictions around them. You can’t violate private property rights.”
“But wouldn’t planting a spy device in your house be a violation of that?”
The man shrugged. “’s a legal gray area, but I’m sure those bastards, your masters, would risk the potential lawsuit if it meant they could nab my property.”
“If I were an android, you could just order me not to plant anything on your property. I’d have to obey.”
“Unless my instructions were overridden by a continuous stream of instructions from those Greenbriar bastards.” He snapped in the woman’s face. “A split second after giving my order, you’ve received new ones.”
“Why would they need to broadcast these instructions? Couldn’t they just build them into me?”
“Not legal. You know that. And anyway, even if they skirted the law, real time instructions are more versatile than pre-loaded ones.”
It was clear the woman was beginning to grow annoyed. She pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. “Okay, so let me get this straight. You think I’m an android.”
“Correct.”
“And you think I’m getting a constant stream of instructions from the Greenbriar corporation.”
“’f ya’ weren’t, I could order ya’ to remove your face.”
The woman frowned at him. “See? I’m not removing my face.”
“Because of their real-time instructions that override mine! Weren’t ya’ payin’ attention?”
The woman sighed. “Just… Please dad, I’ve been worried about you. Your whole family’s worried.”
The man regarded her critically. “You think I’m delusional?” He asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t say-“
“’f I am, what good will comin’ inside do?”
“It would at least make all of us feel better about your living conditions. If nothing else, I could tell everyone you’re still happy and healthy.”
The man grunted. “Fine. Come in.”
The woman followed the man inside.
“Close the door.” The man ordered.
The woman obeyed. As the door clicked shut, a strange look came over the woman’s face.
The man smiled. “The whole house was recently done in with metal mesh. Helps keep any radio waves from comin’ inside. That means you no longer have a tether to those Greenbriar bastard.” He pointed to a chair. “Take a seat.”
The woman moved toward the chair.
“Remove your face.”
The woman reached up to a spot above her hairline and peeled down her flesh. A viscous red fluid ran down the synthetic skull; a facsimile for blood that was used to better conceal an android’s identity.
“Tell me who sent you.” The man ordered.
“Nathanial Trellis, Senior Scientist in the lab-division of Greenbriar.”
“And why were you sent?”
“I was ordered to record your surroundings in the hopes that something could be used to force the ownership of your house away from you.”
The man grinned. “I knew it!” He pointed to a nearby coffee table. “Remove your recording devices and all data you’ve stored up until this point, place them there, then kindly leave my house… Go back to where you came from, and tell those bastards at Greenbriar to kindly shove off.”
The android rose and removed several tiny cameras and storage crystals from its head, then placed them on the table. It walked to the door, opened it, then turned around in shock as the signal returned. “H-how?” The faceless automaton asked.
But the man simply pushed the android outside. “Ya’heard me. Git!”
He watched in satisfaction as the robot stumbled to the car it had driven to the house.
…
A woman watched the screen with a furrowed brow. “Did you need to make it look so much like me?” She asked.
The doctor gave a small nod. “In this fantasy of corporate espionage he’s concocted, he knows that Greenbriar would step up their attempts over time. He expects they’d copy your face, down to the freckle, and so that’s what he’s got to encounter.”
“Won’t he start thinking I’m an android?” She asked.
The man shook his head. “This therapy is used to help those with an incurable case of Android Paranoia Syndrome. I know it seems counterintuitive, but he’s actually less likely to think you’re an android this way.” He pointed to the screen, which had zoomed in to the man’s satisfied face. “Look at how much calmer he looks. In his mind, he truly believes Greenbriar is sending copies of people to his house. This delusion would only grow stronger and stronger over time, and ironically, by not having any proof of android-replacement, in just a few short years his mental state would grow stressed to the breaking point as he’d take increasingly desperate measures to “discover” one.” The doctor shook his head. “In the past, those diagnosed with it have caused real harm to themselves and others.”
“But why me? Can’t the robot look like someone else? It’s just… I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“If you looked at the android, your mind would be screaming at you, telling you that you’re not looking at a real human. People’ve evolved to notice a million tiny things about one another. In the past it’s helped us judge the other’s intent. These days, that same sense allows us to easily detect an android. Your dad doesn’t know it, but less than a second after seeing it, his mind had already deduced it was an artificial human. He couldn’t tell you how or why he knew, but the tiny subtleties were great enough that the conclusion his subconscious mind came to was obvious. Your face, your real face… Well, it’s human. The multitude of calculations that occur beneath the conscious mind will allow him to see you and trust you, because he’s already seen what an artificial version of you looks like and can contrast the two.”
“So by using a fake-me, he’ll be more inclined to trust the real-me?”
Her skepticism must’ve seemed obvious to the doctor. “I know it’s strange, but we’ve had tens of thousands of cases, and they all indicate that this is how people with APS react.”
The woman frowned and turned her eyes back to the screen, where one of the cameras inside her father’s house recorded his smug satisfaction.