The Story of Candy Apple - Android
Page 13

   Thomas walked around Candy examining her from every angle. “As I live and breathe, Candy Apple herself,” he said after he finished his examination. “God it is good to see you again. We should have never let you go.”
   “Yes, but think of all the cool stuff that has happened to me so far that I’d be missing out on right now,” Candy replied sarcastically.
   “Lieutenant, who are all these other people?” Thomas asked. He included the limited-edition first-generation service android as part of the “other people.”
   “Legal representation,” Linda replied.
   Candy came over and stood next to Thomas. “Who knew they actually have android lawyers, real androids, who knew? I have to get out more,” she said.
   “Mister Roth, my name is Pax. I have been engaged by Miss Apple to represent her best interests and clear her name proving the death of Candy’s former owner was accidental,” the old first-generation android said. “With the death of the owner no longer in question, we then must establish ownership. I am certain there would be several interested parties in acquiring the contents of Miss Apple’s brain, and she would like very much for her brain to remain her own...”
   “You’re kidding,” Thomas interrupted in disbelief.
   “I've been told that I don't have a real good sense of humor,” Pax said. “I brought a couple of court orders with me to prove it. The first one gives us temporary custody of Candy and April. The second one is a court order allowing us access to certain equipment you have on-site so we can download Candy's recording of the event to disk.” One of Pax's aides stepped up and handed Thomas several folded pieces of paper. “Also, on a few of those pieces of paper, you'll find our contract as independent investigative authority from the relevant states involved and a request for technical assistance even though we have brought our own engineer to oversee the process and collect the necessary data for the court.”
   “What do you want April for?” Thomas asked.
   “We need a known functional android who has been online as long as Candy as a baseline model to compare the validity of our investigation against,” Pax replied. “April was activated 3 minutes and 17 seconds after Candy making her the most logical choice for the baseline model.”