05 - Plans
I should've sensed what she was capable of and ran the other way.
We spent the next few days planning the whole thing out. If her little bowling-ball malfunction didn't show me what was really going in that head of hers, her proficiency at planning a murder should have.
At the time all I thought was, "Sure, she's a robot, of course she would be good at planning a murder. It's how they think."
It turned out she already had his clone wrapped around her finger. He was in love with her. He was engineered to be slow in the intelligence department; all he could really do was perform some menial tasks around the house. Somehow, though, she had managed to spark some dormant impulse deep within his genetic code and he had fallen for her. She assured me she could get him to do anything.
Of course, we couldn't actually get him to, you know, commit the murder. There were too many fail-safes programmed into the genes of those...things. The triple indemnity clause was rarely invoked. Clones could still accidentally kill in the same way humans sometimes could, but they couldn't intentionally do it.
Her husband - Walsh was his name - was due to attend a business meeting on IO in a month. She said that he always went on a space walk on the return trip. That was where we would do it. We'd murder him, let the clone take the blame, and ride off into the sunset with our bags of money.
Easy, huh? At this point I trusted her with everything. Planning a murder together has a way of bringing people closer, whether you like it or not. She had me all wrapped up in the details and in the pictures she painted of our life together afterwards. There was only one catch. She was like the clone, it was impossible for her to actually kill Walsh. So, she turned to me and asked if I was prepared to kill someone. She told me it wouldn't be pretty and she would understand if I was queasy about it.
Looking into those glossy blue eyes of hers, I didn't hesitate for a second. I said I'd kill him for her.