A scribble of lightning cracks from the roof of the house to the weedy lawn. I bend down, light up a cigarette on the flaming patch, and stomp out the fire. The gray brick house hums at me, and my muscles tense to dodge electrocution.
Three stony stories of house, heavy drapes behind a few windows, the rest just X’ed out with boards and nails. Power cable ivy clings to the walls and the roof is hairy with antennas and silver domes and satellite dishes, all throwing sparks. Crackling air stands my hair on end all over.
In my coat pocket I’ve got a folded picture of the kid gone missing. I take it out and give the doorbell a buzz. I’m gonna have to flash them my license, probably. It says Prester John, P.I. Yes, I’m a real private eye, it’s right there on the license, no I didn’t get this out of a cereal box.
Ding-dong, ding-dong, no one home, but somebody left the door unlocked, so I let myself in with a ghost-house creak.
The first floor has wires and clanking machines and ghostly furniture under sheets. Lots of dust, no people.
“Anyone home?”
I stand still and listen and all I hear is the house humming. Then there’s a sharp shatter sound that makes me jump—kssshhh, ksshhhhh.
I follow the sound to a kitchen with counters full of leaking Chinese take-out containers and waxy pizza boxes. KSSSSSHHHHH, again, behind a narrow door in the corner. I go through the door, find a set of corkscrew stairs going down, and descend into a mad scientist’s laboratory.
There are beakers and curly-straw tubes and green, bubbling witch cauldrons under flickery fluorescents. Purple lightning balls speed down exposed wires and copper machines sizzle. A towering grandfather clock ticks away the time in the corner.
And there’s a shiny metal man holding a skinny guy in a lab coat. Holding him a couple feet off the floor.
The metal man looks human, if someone stripped off your skin and replaced all the squishy, squiggly bits. Metal rods, braided cables, springs, hydraulic pumps and pistons, gears and grommets, clear fiber strands, whirring motors. Instead of bones and muscles and blood and nerves. Two blue lenses glow out of a shimmering silver head minus face features.
My mouth hangs open and lets my cigarette drop out.
“Huh. You, uh, want me to shoot it?” I ask. I pull my gun. “Is it bulletproof?”
Its headlights turn on me. “That depends on where you shoot it,” it says. Soft lullaby voice, not guy or girl. It lowers the skinny guy. The skinny guy scuttles aside, scowls, brushes off his lab coat. “Do you always burst into houses looking for something to shoot?” the metal man asks.
“Not intentionally. Ends up happening sometimes. A lot.” I look at the skinny guy, wild white shock of hair, bug-eye glasses. “So it talks? It doesn’t have a mouth.”
The metal man glides over, I step back, step back, step back, and it’s got me up against the wall, gun barrel between its brass ribs. A spidery metal hand wiggles in front of my face, and fingertips threaten the eyepatch covering my empty left eye socket. “You don’t have an eye,” it says. It’s close enough I can hear clockwork whirring in its chest.
It pulls back, I slump down, start breathing again. This is why my hair goes gray. The robot walks to a wall plastered with schematics, glances at plans for Frankenstein, and takes down a plaque with letters in frilly gold script. It strolls to the stairs, pauses, stamps out the smoldering cigarette butt, takes the stairs real quiet.
“So.” I point my gun at the stairs and look at the skinny mad scientist guy. “Robot?”
The mad scientist tries to straighten his hair. “Robot,” he says.
“You put that thing together?”
“Yes.” He’s scarecrow thin, without the straw, long limbs dangling like puppet arms and legs. Lined face, skin dragging down his eyes at the corners. “And his brain might not be meat, but it has just as many neural pathways as yours, so maybe it’s best not to call him a robot.”
“He? It’s a him? Huh.” I gesture at my crotch. “Didn’t notice any equipment. Retractable, maybe?”
He plucks up broken bottles from the floor instead of answering my question. “You’re here about David, yes?” Delicate piano player fingers gather glass into a wastebasket. Neat nails, slivers of white crescent moon hanging over fingertips. “I already spoke to the police. So you must not be police. Private investigator?”
I browse his lab as he wipes up fuming chemical spills. “Prester John. Doctor Bartholomew, yeah?”
He used anatomy drawings and circuit diagrams for wallpaper. A finely shaded cross-section of an open heart, a skeleton labeled in Latin, a dissected transistor radio. Not a single naked lady calendar.
“Doctor Bartholomew, correct,” he tells me. “Alfred. You should be talking to the boyfriend. Have you talked to him?”
There are pictures of tropical beaches tacked to the wall in one corner, out of place in a science lab. I wave my notebook at him. “Alfred, okay. The boyfriend, he’s next on the list.” Beaches cut out of calendars, postcard beaches. Sparkling sand, skin cancer sun, turquoise surf. “David. He took care of your gardens. He had a thing for plants.”
Alfred sighs and his fuzzy white toothbrush eyebrows droop. “A green thumb, yes. Studying botany at the university, I believe. Left to me, this house would be surrounded by desert. I was not his only client, I’m sure you’re aware.”
I pull up the edge of a postcard pinned to the wall and peek at the backside. “Heh. Yeah. My job to be aware. You’re halfway down my list.” The postcard was sent to a city on the other side of the continent. Alfred slaps my hand away, so that’s all I get. “Okay.” I get out my notebook so he knows I mean business. “Cops were here. You know the routine. I ask when you last saw him, then you just tell me whatever you told the cops.”
“Two weeks.”
What I write down is eggs, cigarettes, gin. The grocery store’s on the way home. “Two weeks, yeah, right answer.” Most of the lab, the simmering vats and beeping machines and electrodes, it’s all colonized by spiders. The corner with the beaches, it’s a sacred shrine, no cobwebs. I point my pen at the corner. “You like the beach?”
His eyes look right through me. “I did. A long time ago.” He touches one of the pictures. “This isn’t my beach. I can’t find mine. The sun’s never really this bright, is it?”
I scratch my head. “Dunno. Overcast this morning. Might rain. You got anything for me you didn’t spill to the cops?”
He glares and shoos me toward the stairs. “No. I don’t. I’m sorry he’s missing, but I don’t know anything. I have work to do, if you don’t mind.”
“Nah, I don’t mind. How about the robot? It know anything? I didn’t even know there would be a robot.”
Alfred waves a hand, settles on a bench, and picks up a tiny screwdriver. “He knew David. Go ahead and ask. I’m obviously not his keeper.”
He doesn’t take the business card I offer, so I pin it next to one of his beaches. “Have a nice day,” I say. The notebook goes in my pocket and I leave the house.
I stop on the porch and watch black clouds boil in the sky. Lightning makes white rips in the storm. No rain yet.
The robot bends over an overgrown rosebush. It’s got a blooming yellow flower cupped in its hand, and its nothing face grazes the petals. Are robots rainproof?
“You can smell things?”
The robot straightens. “Of course. Can’t you?”
“Well, yeah, that’s what noses are for.” I tap the tip of my nose. “Didn’t see one on you.” I take out the photo. David’s smiling tanned face, soil-smudged, and red hair he has to keep pushing out of his face. “You knew David?”
The robot reaches for the photo. I back away from the talking lightning rod. “Dave,” it says. “Yes. I miss him.”
“Dave?”
“He told me to call him Dave. It made him laugh. We were friends.”
“Huh. Friends. Cute.” I tap my head. “You got a friendship chip in there somewhere?”
The robot looks up at the storm. A wet drop hits my head, and a few plink off the robot. “He showed me how to take care of the gardens, how to raise a flower from a tiny seed.”
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Two weeks ago.”
I nod. “Doctor said the same. You know why he’d pull a vanishing act? Enemies? Debts?”
The robot reaches out to a blue-yellow butterfly fluttering on a flower petal. The butterfly hops into its open palm.
“No,” it says.
“You gonna crush that thing?”
The robot tilts its head to examine the butterfly. “Why would I do that?” It reaches its hand to me, but the butterfly flaps away. “Would you?”
“Nah, but I’m not a robot. Don’t know how robots feel about insects. If it was a spider, maybe. What’s that you got there?”
I point at the plaque in his other hand, the frilly gold letters it took off the wall.
“My soul,” it says. It shows the plaque to me.
It’s a gilded gothic script certificate, testifying the bearer possesses one Immortal Soul. Verified and authenticated by Improbable Dynamics International.
“Huh. Nice thing to have. Fancy frame. So that makes you, what, not a robot?”
It crouches and starts pulling weeds out of the rose patch. “I am what I am.”
“You just need a piece of paper to say you’ve got a soul these days?”
“I do. Do you have a certificate, detective?”
“Huh. Yeah, you know, maybe I don’t have one. Maybe in my sock drawer, next to my unicorn.” I hand the robot my card. “Think of anything else that might help, let me know.”
The robot piles long strands of weeds with tumors of dirt at the end. “You’ll be back,” it says.
I stare at the metal gardener and scratch my head. “Yep. Don’t think I’m done here.”
Detective Murphy won’t let me smoke in the police station. He takes away my cigarettes and tosses them in the trash.
He leans up against the window looking in on the interrogation room. Sleeves rolled up, blue tie worth more than my rent, pressed pants with a pleat you could shave with. And a job that’s earned him even more gray in his hair than I’ve got in mine.
He raps a knuckle on the glass. “You talked with the boyfriend yet?”
The boyfriend’s nervous in a leather biker jacket, white t-shirt, scuffed jeans, black boots. He’s handcuffed at the battered wooden table, pinned under unforgiving light.
“Nah, couldn’t find him. You been keeping him from me?”
“Just picked him up on a traffic violation. Found some pot in his pocket. We decided he should stick around for a while.”
“He talk?”
“Yeah.” Murphy nods. He sips out of a chipped green coffee mug, World’s #1 Dad on the side. “Yeah, he talked. Blubbered, actually, whole bunch of crying. He hasn’t seen David or his car in two weeks. He’s used to seeing the car around. They lived together.”
“Huh. This kid, he didn’t do it. The doctor, maybe. Put my money there.”
Murphy crosses his arms, forearm muscles bulge. “Really. The doctor. What was he supposed to have done?”
“Murder. I think he killed David.”
Murphy snorts. “He killed him? Do you have a body? We don’t have a body, and we’re the cops. Maybe a motive? Some evidence?”
I shrug. “It’ll turn up. These things always end bad.”
He leans close. “Do me a favor,” he whispers, voice low. “Don’t go spreading that shit around.”
“There’s the robot, though. Could be the robot. Can’t trust robots, right?”
“You met the robot.”
“We chatted. It showed me its soul. I didn’t have anything to show it.”
Murphy shakes his head. “Fucking robot,” he says. “You know, I could buy the robot killing him.” He nods. “Yeah, I can see it, circuits misfiring or some shit. Aren’t they supposed to have directives, don’t hurt humans, shit like that?”
“Huh. Can’t think of any time those worked.”
“You run into a robot before?”
I touch my scar. “Yeah. This one seems nicer.”
Murphy keeps his eyes on my eyepatch. “You put a human skin on it, you’d barely know the difference. Still a robot underneath, though. I’ll have to check with the DA, see if we can arrest a robot.”
“You get anything out of the robot?”
He stares off into the distance. “I wonder. Maybe we don’t need to arrest it. Not human.” He blinks and snaps back to me. “Out of the robot? Yeah, the robot was behind the glass here.” He taps a knuckle on the window. “I’d show you the video, but it’s mostly just the robot staring at the camera. Asking us questions about police procedure and criminal law and its rights.”
“Obstructing justice, huh?”
“Mostly it kept telling us about its soul. Bullshit.”
“It has a certificate. Looks nice.”
“Well, I got a certificate for being on the honor roll in third grade. Nobody cares. We checked out the company that gave him the soul. Don’t ask me how that works, they lawyered up. You can try your luck.”
“Next stop. Unless you got something more for me.”
His lips curls, his nose wrinkles, and his look makes me wonder if I stepped in dog shit and tracked it into the station. Or maybe I’m the dog shit he smells. “For you?” He puts a finger on my chest and pushes just hard enough to show how hard he could push if he wanted. I dig my feet in so I don’t fall over. “How about stay out of this? I know the family hired you, but we can handle this. We’re professionals.”
I push his finger away. “Yeah. I bet you have a plaque on your wall that says so. I’ll call you when I find a body.”
Improbable Dynamics International has a whole floor high up in a steel and glass tower downtown.
Right off the elevator I see a wall with IDI in big silver letters. A bare reception desk, chair pushed away. Fluffy purple couches, leafy green potted palms, celebrity gossip magazines on a small table. Soft jazz croons from hidden speakers. Rain beads down the windows, the gray city outside drowns.
The door behind the desk is busted open, right off the hinges.
I pull my gun out and let it go first through the door.
I hear loud voices, and there’s a conversation somewhere down a bright hall of tasteful wood paneling and locked doors.
One door’s definitely unlocked, a heavy steel door, unlocked because it’s ripped out of the frame and flat on the floor.
I step into a vault room. Four walls of little safe deposit box doors, lots broken open, drawers scattered on the floor, spilling paperwork and precious gems and cloudy things in jars. The robot stands in the middle of the wreckage.
It pulls open another drawer—it doesn’t need keys. It roots through the contents, scatters clear sparkly stones on the floor, moves on.
“Remember the contract?” says a throaty woman voice. “The contract says we retain it as payment for your soul. You do want to keep your soul, right?”
The voice belongs to a lady mostly legs in a sober gray business suit. She’s leaning back against one wall, arms folded, tapping a foot on the floor, impatient. Naughty librarian glasses and dark hair corkscrewed into a bun.
“I did not sign the contract,” says the robot. It yanks out another drawer, tosses out stacks of foreign cash.
“Um, let the lady go, or I’m gonna have to shoot you,” I say.
The lady looks at me and rolls her eyes. “He won’t hurt me,” she says.
The robot sighs. “She’s right, I’m not here to hurt anyone.”
“Well, maybe just go away, or I’ll shoot?”
The robot steps closer. I hold my ground, shaking just a little. It snatches away my gun and gives me bruised fingers.
“Ow.” I suck on my injured fingers.
It holds up the gun, turns it over, blue eyes glowing on the shiny steel. “Is this how you get what you want? Does that work?”
I let my fingers out of my mouth. “Most of the time. Unless the other side has more guns. You have guns built in? Probably lasers.”
Metal digits blur across the gun, and it comes apart in its hands. It gives me the pieces. “I wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself,” it says.
It walks out the door.
I drop the gun parts in a coat pocket. “You okay?” I ask the lady.
She grins, and her face softens. She can’t be out of her twenties. “Never been anything else. You came here to rescue me?” She kneels down to start cleaning up the mess. “Valiant.”
I blush. “Huh. So you didn’t need a rescue. The thought counts, though.” I get down to help her put things back where they came from. I pick up a hard plastic pill the size of my fist. It’s ticking.
She takes it from me, gently. “Not really. But it’s cute, you trying so hard. You don’t see that kind of thing, these days.” She holds out her hand. “Eve. I represent Improbable Dynamics.”
“Prester John. I find missing people.”
We shake.
“So, Mr. John, what brings you here?” She puts objects in little piles against the wall. “Besides a damsel in distress.”
I lean up against the wall and try to smoke; she doesn’t stop me. “The robot. The robot has a soul. Robots get souls now?”
“Well, that’s why the doctor came to us. We provide solutions to complex engineering problems.”
“Souls are an engineering problem? Like bridges?”
“When you don’t come with one of your own, yes. I take it this is about David?”
I nod and suck down smoke.
“Then I’ll tell you what I can. The doctor contracted us to give his creation a human soul. Obviously, we don’t have souls floating around in jars in our fridge; who does?”
“I have mustard in my fridge. Maybe some pickles.”
“Nobody keeps souls in stock these days. So we had to get creative. Our engineers submitted several proposals.” She hands me a folder from the floor. “Here. Not classified, since the doctor rejected this one.”
Medical diagrams, surgical procedures, a color-coded map of the brain. I give it a minute’s thought. “Huh. I think I get it. You wanted to put a human brain in a robot body?”
She shrugs. “One option. But the doctor said that’s just retrofitting an existing soul. Said it wouldn’t work.”
“Really.”
“He’d tried that before.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I think he’s been at this for a while.”
“So you made him a certificate.”
She smiles. “Elegant solution, right?”
“It’s just a piece of paper.”
“Really? He believes he has a soul now, so who are you to argue? I think, therefore I am, Mr. John.”
“What happens if I stick it in a shredder?”
She blinks. “Nothing. It’s just a piece of paper. I mean, do you need a certificate?”
“Not even sure I have a soul. All I’ve got is this.” I tap my forehead.
“I thought that’s what we were talking about.”
“Yeah.” I scratch my head. “How come I don’t get cases about cheating husbands? This shit’s for philosophers. Just tell me what the robot came here for.”
“Can’t do that. He wanted the payment we received from the doctor. That’s confidential and you’re not the client.”
“Maybe the client will tell me.”
“Maybe he will.”
We just look at each other for a couple seconds.
“So, you think it’s capable of murder?” I ask. “That’s what I’m interested in.”
She sighs. She gets up and moves toward the door. My time’s up. “He’s as capable as any other human.”
“That doesn’t help him much.”
“It doesn’t? You have a bleak view of humanity, Mr. John.”
The doctor’s in the basement again. At least he sounds like he’s in the basement. I can hear him puttering around, cursing at himself, but he’s not in his lab. His voice echoes at me through the ducts.
I take the chance to peek at his postcard. It’s not addressed to the doctor. The postcard starts Dear Daddy, daughter to father, wish you were here, having a great time on our honeymoon, blah blah blah.
I hear a click and the front of the grandfather clock opens. The doctor steps out, wiping his hands on a rag. He sees me, tosses the rag, quickly shuts the clock behind him.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“None of your business,” he says.
“You got a secret lab behind your not-so-secret lab?”
“Something like that.”
I wave the postcard at him. “You don’t have kids. I checked up on you. You steal other people’s postcards?”
He grabs it away and cradles it to his chest. “I found it at a flea market. I… I imagined it had been written for me. I liked that idea. Now go away.”
“You wished you had kids? You’ve got a robot.”
“And look how well that turned out. He just wants to leave me.”
“I can’t imagine why he’d think he owns himself. Itself.”
“You think he did something to David, is that it? The cops think so, too.”
“Would he? Would it. It. Would it do something?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea what goes through his mind. There’s nothing in his programming to prevent it.”
“Huh. That was stupid.”
“Free will, detective, free will.” He tacks the postcard back on the wall. “Not always the best idea, in hindsight.”
“Why don’t you just go back to the beach, find yourself a nice tan bikini lady, have a kid the old fashioned way?”
“There’s no beach for me anymore.”
“Just saying, if I was gonna build myself a robot, I’d install some lady parts.”
“Did you come here just to mock me?”
“Nah, I came here to find a body. Maybe even a killer to go with it.” The doctor gulps. “And I want to know what you traded for the soul.”
A door above creaks open, then slams shut. Maybe somebody moving through the house.
The doctor looks up at the ceiling. “Why don’t you ask him yourself?” he says. “Leave me alone.”
More doors bang open and shut. “It just wanders in and out, all on its own?”
“I know. Bad idea. Hindsight and all. Go away.”
I go back upstairs and follow the sounds up to the attic.
A bare lightbulb glow fills the attic. I see shelves bursting with leather-bound books and rickety tables trembling under more perilous book stacks. A black iron stove in the corner belches smoke. A ratty couch against the wall faces a rabbit-eared TV. I smell cinnamon and cloves.
The robot’s on the couch. The top of its skull is off, and I get to see a flickering circuit board brain, full of transistors and capacitors like little prescription pills.
A cable trails from the exposed brain to the TV. There’s a young man on the TV, laughing into the camera, soil streaks on his cheeks. The camera pans across blooming gardens, back to the guy. He’s gently folding the roots of a bush into the dark earth.
“That’s a neat trick,” I say. The robot shifts slightly, barely turning its head to catch me out of the side of its eye. I nod toward the TV. “Your memories? You can play your memories on TV. Handy.”
“I wouldn’t kill him, Mr. John. He set me free.”
“Sure he did.”
The camera pans back to the house. I see the doctor in a window, watching and frowning. He pulls a curtain across the window and disappears behind it. Back to David.
The robot pulls out the cable, and the TV screen goes static. The robot leaves the couch, walks over to a bookshelf, thumbs through some books.
It holds up a complete Shakespeare. “If you prick me, I do not bleed,” it says.
“So you can read,” I say.
“I’m going away,” it says. “I wanted to take a few of my favorites.” It puts a couple books into a chapped leather backpack.
“The doctor said you were leaving.”
“Yes. Dave encouraged me. He said there was an entire world out there. The doctor is content to rot here, dreaming of his beach.”
“You shouldn’t go anywhere. Cops don’t like it when suspects run away.”
“Is that what I am? A suspect?” It slams the backpack on the table. “Why are you all so threatened by me? Am I so different from you?”
“Yeah. Very. You’re a robot.”
The robot picks up a book and flips through the pages. “But I don’t want to hurt you. I just want everything you want.”
“You’re made of metal. You have headlights for eyes. I can get at least ten bucks for recycling you.”
“It’s because of what I look like. What I’m made of. If I draped myself in flesh, would you leave me alone?”
“Sure. Then nobody’d know the difference. You could lurk among us.”
“I don’t want to lurk. I want to live.”
“Good luck with that. You’re not alive. Or maybe you are. I don’t know.”
“I want to go to the beach,” it says. “The doctor says I wouldn’t feel the sand, not the way humans do. I think he’s wrong. Would you go there, if you could?”
“I don’t think there’s a beach out there for me. Not in my world. Nice idea, though.”
“So you’re like the doctor.”
I go to a window facing the rear of the house. Rain pours down the glass. “Maybe. All I get is rain.” I turn away from the storm. “So I’m here for a reason. Tell me what the doctor traded for your soul.”
“I loved him, you know.”
I blink. “Not an answer. And love? C’mon. You don’t even have the equipment.”
“Oh. So I can’t love because I’m a robot. Because I can’t fuck. Is that it?”
I’d rather look out at the gardens then meet his gaze. “Well, sorta. Yeah. What’s the price for a soul?”
“Why should I tell you?”
The weather is tearing David’s roses to pieces. There’s a wild thicket of trees behind the flower beds, growing thick and wild. Something that’s not green or leafy shines through the branches. Chrome. I squint and make out a grille, a headlight, a windshield.
“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t. Maybe get a lawyer. I gotta go.”
I run downstairs, out the back door, through the flowers, wade through weeds at the yard’s edge. I pull back branches and find a small sedan stashed in a clearing. Tires punctured, windows cracked.
Huh.
I take down the car’s license number. I glance over my shoulder, and I can see the house through sheets of rain. The robot watches me from the attic window.
Gotta take this to the cops.
“That’s his car,” Murphy says. “Honda Accord, eggplant purple. License number matches.” He grins at the computer screen and slaps the uniformed cop at the keyboard. “We got a warrant, guaranteed. Any warrant we want. We’ll nail that robot.”
Somebody cheers. One of the cops in the squad room starts clapping.
I cross my arms, lean back in a squeaky chair, kick my feet up on the desk. “How come it took me to find the car?” I say. “You’re the professionals.”
Murphy knocks my feet back down. “We didn’t have a reason to search the property. We’re still doing interviews. But thanks. Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Yeah, but the robot didn’t do it,” I say. “If anything was done.”
Murphy glares at me. “First break in the case and you want to go and ruin it for us?”
“The doctor, sure. He’s fishy. Jealous, I think. David was gonna take the robot away.”
“It’s a damn robot. What would David want with it?”
“Some kind of love? I dunno. Maybe he wanted the laundry done, and the dishes.”
“Love? That’s fucked up.”
Somebody shouts out in the hallway, and we jump out of our chairs. The squad room doors swing open and the robot crashes in, all rain-wet and shiny. Some of the fluids dripping off the robot are thicker and blacker than rain. I’m pretty sure they came out of the corpse it’s cradling in its arms. The head has a few patches of red hair left, but I can’t really identify the face because the skin is shaded from green to black and bloated. Flesh has even started to slough off the arms in strips. The corpse’s entire right hand is bare of flesh, like someone pulled off a glove.
I think we found David.
I hear a dozen guns clatter cocked and ready, every cop armed and aimed at the robot. I pull mine out, aimed at the floor.
“Put him down,” Murphy says. He clicks off his safety and points at the ground.
The robot looks at David in its arms. It gently lays him across a desk. David’s head rolls toward us. His eyes and tongue are bulging, and inky fluid leaks out the side of his mouth
“Dave is dead,” it says. “The doctor killed him.”
“Sure he did,” Murphy says. “Shit, you’re gonna have to turn yourself off or we’ll have to take you down.”
Its eyes flare. “Off? Take me down? I didn’t kill him. I loved him.”
“No. Off, now.”
“I didn’t do anything!” it yells. It raises fists into the air, smashes them down on a desk, exploding it into splinters.
Everyone freezes.
“Maybe it has an off switch?” I suggest. “You know, we just flip the switch, case closed?”
Murphy shrugs. “Or just shoot it.”
The robot sprints across the room, knocks over three desks and two cops on the way. It grabs Murphy’s gun in one hand, picks Murphy up with the other and tosses him over the desks right smack into a knot of uniform cops. It does all of this before any of our sludgy, slow brains can tell our fingers to pull triggers.
And then it’s the fourth of July in the squad room. A whole lot of cops empty their guns into the robot. Lead flashes and dings and sparks off the robot and fluid sprays from severed tubes. The robot leaps at the cops, swinging fists faster than I can see. Lots of thumps and flailing arms, and seconds later the cops are on the ground, rubbing their heads. Gun pieces litter the floor.
The robot is the only one with a gun now.
It approaches me. I haven’t moved yet. There were bullets in every direction I could’ve moved. I’m squeezing my gun, but I leave it at my side. I’m not gonna beat the robot at quick draw.
It points the gun at me.
“Would you like me to demonstrate your off switch?” it growls.
The gun barrel sucks me in.
But it doesn’t pull the trigger. It flips the gun around, grip held out to me. It waits for me to take the gun. I grab it and the robot turns around and races out the doorway.
I go after it but only catch a glimpse of it leaping through a window to the outside. Outside is a five-story drop to the street.
There’s a crash and a crunch and a wailing car alarm.
Murphy pops into the hall. “Follow it!” he screams.
We track it by the traffic accidents left in its wake. The direction it’s going, it’s only going one place.
Improbable Dynamics.
Murphy and I take the elevator up and leave the rest of the force to secure the building.
Eve sits primly at her desk, filing her nails. Mellow strings play through the hidden speakers. She’s humming along under her breath.
She raises her eyes to us and keeps on filing. “How may I help you gentlemen?”
“The robot. Hand him over,” Murphy says.
“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t have a robot here. If you are referring to the metal gentleman who just left, he simply came to retrieve his property.”
“Where did he go?”
She shakes her head. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you. The gentleman in question just signed a contract with our company. As a client, he is entitled to our protection.”
“Shit,” Murphy says. “Fucking lawyers.”
“Huh. Property. He had property?”
She shrugs. “I can’t see that it matters now. I think he’d want you to know, Mr. John. He took back his power switch. When the doctor asked for a soul, we took the switch. We didn’t think it would be fair for him to turn off a soul. But I guess it’s the robot’s switch to do with as he pleases, don’t you agree?”
“Shit,” Murphy says. “You’re going to cooperate with us, tell us everything.”
“Everything I’m able to, of course.”
Murphy starts his questions, and I slump into one of the reception chairs.
It hits me. I don’t have a case anymore.
When the missing boy turns into a dead boy, that’s a case for the cops. I don’t do homicide. I go home and they hunt for the robot, but nothing turns up. Gone.
So I’m out of a job and I put it behind me and I don’t get a check from David’s parents. I don’t blame them.
Murphy calls me in a couple rainy days later.
I show up at Murphy’s office and the doctor’s already there. His soggy raincoat stretches to his ankles, and a floppy felt hat droops on his head. He’s got a small, tired smile.
Murphy rocks back and forth in his chair and sips coffee. “Thought you’d want to get a look at this.”
“I found a recording. One of the robot’s memories,” the doctor says. He looks at Murphy, won’t look me in the eye. “And I made one of my own.”
Murphy points a remote at a TV in the corner. It flickers on and shows a shot from inside the doctor’s house, looking out the front window. Shaky camera, robot point of view.
A tanned redhead pulls weeds in the garden. Something comes up the driveway—a helmeted figure on a motorcycle. Off with the helmet, surprise, it’s the boyfriend. They embrace. They kiss. I wait for music that never plays. The camera turns away and the screen goes dark.
Murphy hits stop. “I think that gives us motive.” He switches tapes. “And then there’s this.”
“That’s motive? What is that, jealousy? Robots get jealous?” I say.
“Sure they do,” Murphy says.
“But love, they can’t do that.”
“Nope.”
He hits play.
A still camera shot, not the robot’s this time. The robot takes center stage, bolted to a table with thick metal braces. The doctor hovers above it, hand over a button on the robot’s chest.
“Off button,” the real, live doctor says.
“Yes, I did it!” says the video robot. “I killed him! What choice did I have? I didn’t want to be alone!” it yells, panicky. “Don’t turn me off!” The robot strains, bolts break, and the camera goes static.
“Probably not admissible, of course,” Murphy says. “But who needs evidence? It’s a robot. I think we can take this bastard.”
“Bastard? The robot? The robot’s a bastard. Huh.” I stare at the static and think.
“Really wish you could’ve hit that power button,” says Murphy.
The doctor tugs on his hat. “I… I couldn’t. Didn’t have it in me to end his life. Not my place.”
Murphy sighs. “It’s just a robot. And he broke free?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I don’t know where he went.”
My eye stays on the doctor. He doesn’t twitch. “No idea,” I say. “None. Poof, the robot’s gone.”
Murphy interrupts. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t go anywhere until this is resolved, doctor. We’ll have more questions, and we’ll send a team to gather more evidence.”
I grab a pen off Murphy’s desk and twirl it in my hand. “Yeah. Where would you go anyway? The beach?”
The doctor flinches.
I shake my head at him. “No, not the beach. Never there, huh? You gonna miss your robot buddy?”
I lean forward and stab the pen through the doctor’s right hand.
The doctor gasps, recoils, pulling his hand back. It just rips the wound wider. Murphy jumps back.
“What the fuck, Prester?” Murphy says.
I grab the doctor’s hand, and he struggles, but younger muscles win. “That’s blood, yeah.” I poke around in his wound and Murphy pulls at my coat. “And muscle? Yeah, think so.” My hands are sticky with his blood. “And bone. Okay, call me a believer.” I let him have his hand back. He clutches it in his good hand and gets blood all over himself.
Murphy slams me back in my chair. “Jesus Christ, what are you thinking?” he says.
I shrug. “I was thinking he’s a robot. I thought wrong.”
The doctor winces. He sucks air through clenched teeth. “Understandable, under the circumstances. But the department will hear from my lawyers. What’s he even doing here? He’s not a cop.”
He gets up and hurries out the door.
Murphy waits for his door to slam shut and rattle, then he slumps in his chair. “Thanks for that. Jackass.”
I shrug. “I don’t buy his story.”
“You’re going to lose your license.”
“The robot didn’t do it.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore. Those videos? That’s just icing. Do you know the pressure I’m under? The chief, the DA, the mayor, they’re all crowded on my back right now. People are scared of killer robots. So the robot will take the fall because no one has a problem if the robot hangs.”
“Hah. Justice.”
Murphy rubs his forehead. He’s got new wrinkles and more bags under his eyes. “We missed our chance for that. David died.”
“Yeah.”
“We never found the location, you know? Don’t know where he died, where he spent his last days, none of that. We’re just going to end the robot, shut the lid on this one. Never mind the holes.”
“No location? You checked everywhere?”
“Nothing at the house. Took us a day just to catalog the contents of that lab.”
“So the other lab, what was in there?”
“Other lab?”
“Yeah. The secret lab. Behind the clock.”
“No clue what you’re talking about.”
“Hah. Really? Shit.” I stand up. “I’ve gotta go.”
The doctor’s not at home. Lots of noise comes from the basement so I check it out. No one in the lab, but the secret clock door is wide open.
I go through and find the robot breaking shit.
The robot tosses a test tube on the ground, smashes a computer monitor, knocks a tray of used surgical instruments on the floor.
The secret lab’s small. A metal table in the center, with metal straps and a lot of red smears. Schematics spread out on the table, the brain transplant ones from Improbable Dynamics, plus files and instructions for installing the off switch.
There’s a dirty mattress in the corner with deep red blotches all over it. Handcuffs dangle from water pipes on the wall. A metal pail nearby stinks of shit and piss.
I can’t take my eyes off the mattress. “So you really did kill him. So much for robot love,” I tell the robot.
It hurls a blue bottle at the wall, which explodes in a blue puff. It waits for the cloud of sparkling powder to settle, then walks back through the clock.
I wipe powder off my face and spit blue saliva on the floor. Maybe now I’ve got some fancy disease that will eat my bones from the inside out. Whatever it does, it tastes like strawberries. I spit again and go after the robot.
“You installed your own off switch? Feeling guilty? Suicidal?”
The robot pauses by the beach shrine. It pulls down the stolen postcard, heads for the stairs. I follow it up to the living room, leave it there, and wander until I find a phone in the kitchen where I call Detective Murphy.
“You might want to know I’ve got your robot,” I tell him. “Red-handed. Mad scientist’s house.”
The robot didn’t take the chance to run away, it’s just standing at the living room window, hands on the glass. I don’t know what it’s looking at; all I see is a gray day.
“You had me going, you know,” I say. “I almost believed in you.”
The robot turns on me. “I didn’t mean to kill him. But he had to go away.” It leaves the window and slouches on a shrouded couch. It looks at the postcard. “Do you think the sun out there is really that big and bright?”
I hear loud sirens, squealing tires, car doors opening, then slamming shut. I shrug. I wonder who I’m talking to. “Don’t think I’ll get to find out. It’s always fucking raining around here.”
The robot hugs the postcard to its chest.
The cops don’t knock. They stomp in and they shoot first, boom-boom-boom. Then they yell at everyone to get down and I think they shoot some more, but my ears ring and I can’t hear the shots.
I’m on the floor, out of the way of bullets, hopefully. When the shooting stops, I stand up. The robot doesn’t; there’s not enough left of it to stand.
The head is on the floor, lights out, skull top blown away. It leaks clear pink fluid and I can see gray matter inside.
“Huh,” I say.
Murphy kneels down next to the head.
“Well. The doctor really knew how to build ’em.” He reaches out to poke the brain, then remembers cops aren’t supposed to do that. “Almost like the real thing.”
“Yeah, but not quite.”
I let them clean up the mess.
Case closed. Everybody happy, except David’s family. But the robot menace is gone and humans are still special. No worries.
The doctor didn’t stick around. Murphy got a medal. I got regular work spying on cheating husbands. Count that as vacation.
A year after the robot. It’s another rainy day and I’ve just finished filling a camera with money shots of a senator and a hooker he’s not married to.
I open my office door and almost step on a postcard someone slipped through the crack. There’s a beach scene on the front, diamond-tipped waves, sparkling white sand, lush palms. A sun bigger than the whole world. A guy in swim trunks is in the foreground.
I know his face, except he’s smiling, with less wrinkles than I remember. Less wrinkles than me.
There’s someone else off in the waves, a guy, a girl, I dunno. Does it matter?
I turn the postcard over and smile. There’s a single line on the back.
Wish you were here?