Lance Erlick. Reborn. New York: Kensington, 2018. E-book.

Reborn is a clever book whose main character is an android. She is what the film Blade Runner calls a replicant. Synthia Cross looks and behaves like a human. She is the first and at this point the only robot like this. “[She] was synthetic and intelligent enough to pass as a human and hence a crossover—thus the name…given her: Synthia Cross.” (44)

Even though her creator, Dr. Jeremiah Machten (make a “ten”? Ten times the speed of sound?), has programmed her as any computer would be programmed, she seems to have memories or voices that are unusual. Machten has created an emotion chip which seems to be working, but part of that emotion seems to be telling her not to trust Machten.

To some degree we can understand this. Machten is very much like the ancient mythical sculptor Pygmalion. It seems that he has fallen in love with Synthia and behaves not unlike Pygmalion did with his statue. Of course, in Pygmalion’s case the gods sympathized with him and turned the statue into a real woman. Machten tries something similar using his own programming knowledge. Synthia keeps getting reprogrammed, but her fear of Machten remains.

The main conflict, though, is not really a Synthia vs. Machten one. Machten’s former business partners have falsely accused him of many crimes and kick him out of the partnership with nothing other than his plans for Synthia. This apparently is not enough, especially for former partner Goradine, who wants to completely ruin Machten.

Whose side will Synthia take?

Whose side will the reader take?

We mostly get the story from Synthia’s point of view, but we also see that Machten was treated very shabbily and Goradine is truly a snake.

Two things make this science fiction tale a kind of technothriller. First, there is a lot of suspense. Bad guys are trying to do in Machten and Synthia in turns. This aspect reminded us of a Danielle Steele page-turner we had read years ago. (It was a literal beach read for us.) Lots of fun, and we had to keep reading to find out what would happen. Reborn is no different.

Second, there are interesting ethical questions. In the novel, the United States has passed a law prohibiting the creation or importing of androids that could pass as humans. Other countries have no such scruples. Synthia has been programmed with certain ethical basics such as to neither commit nor assist in a crime and to always obey her creator, Dr. Machten.

Sometimes she is not sure whether a crime is being committed. What about those fears she has of Machten? Should she disobey him if it appears he might be involved in a crime? What if someone is threatening him or her? She comes across Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. She likes those, but they are different, and even they do not answer all her questions.

Too bad she never comes across the Ten Commandments. Oh well.

And though she is unsure about her relationship with her Pygmalion-type creator, she does seem to have some kind of romantic interest in another human being.

She also likes being the one and only “crossover.” Like Blanche Ingram in Jane Eyre, “She wanted to be the lone AI, to have no competition.” (608)

She begins to experience moral or ethical conflicts and seems to begin rationalizing things the way we humans really do. She is growing a sense of self.

Unlawful acts, after all, derived from laws and the logic that obeying laws was for the common good. Her existence was personal. She was growing attached to existing. (1977)

Self-awareness is something distinctly human, or nearly so. Was she becoming human or something else? Something greater or merely something different? If so, how different?

One level in Maslow’s hierarchy did intrigue her: Transcendence. Becoming more than Machten had created her to be was appealing. She didn’t want to become human with all those pitfalls. Instead, she wanted to better understand human emotions like joy, and to transcend her directives to become something more than a slave…(2041)

Most of the tale is told from her perspective. Because she has fifty separate wireless channels and can hack into most surveillance cameras and networked computers, she is almost an omniscient narrator herself. Clever again.

This is a lot of fun to read. The ending is less than satisfying from a narrative perspective, though. The plot and resolution of the conflict makes for a good story, but the last four or five chapters merely summarize what has happened rather than continue telling a story. It was as if the author was running out of time and had to summarize the end for us.

Still, the conflicts are fascinating and perhaps show us some of the inherent difficulties people and society may face as we approach singularity. And like the Star Trek: Voyager episodes about Seven-of-Nine or the Borg, Reborn helps us reflect on what it really means to be human.

N.B.: References are Kindle locations, not page numbers.