by Brian Parker
“Yeah, no problem, Detective. Just trying to help out. The less work I have, the better off the city is.”
“Ain’t that right?” I chuckled.
FIFTEEN: THURSDAY
The rest of Wednesday was spent in a blur of scene processing after the raids on the other chop shops. Thankfully, there weren’t any more large gunfights like what had happened at Solomon’s Flowers, although, one officer did get a bullet to the gut at the warehouse we hit on Third Boulevard. A SWAT sniper redecorated the cheap steel walls with the perp’s brain matter.
After that, it was smooth sailing.
The cybernetic enhancement business was alive and well in Easytown. All four of the sites had operating rooms, computer hookups and spare mechanical parts lying around; not to mention the barrel of discarded human parts we discovered in the third chop shop we hit in a residential neighborhood.
I stretched my aching back and rubbed my calf gently. It was healing, but not quick enough for my tastes. I needed it to be fully-healed, otherwise I was a liability to others—and myself.
After an initial cup of coffee where I stared out the window of my apartment at the first truly sunny day I could remember in a long time, I had Andi bring up the Corrigan collection. He’d claimed to have killed seventy-six people, but there were more than two hundred videos in the collection of files we’d seized from his home.
The first video began with Corrigan torturing a dog. It was from his point-of-view, so he probably had a camera on his forehead or chest like all the daredevils wore, so I couldn’t be sure how old he was. Given the much thinner forearms and higher-pitched voice, I guessed he was a kid, maybe a teenager, when he started his love affair with murder.
I’d seen enough of the first video to realize that he was disturbed, so I advanced to the next one chronologically. It was again from his point of view, and showed him engaged in a fist fight with three other kids. The thinnest of the three ran toward him and Corrigan sidestepped his attack, wrapping an arm around his neck and twisting violently. Then the largest of the teens reached him. There was a flurry of movement; I couldn’t see what was happening, but I thought Corrigan was wrapped up in some type of bear hug. Then, the ganger fell away and Corrigan’s foot rose up, stomping down repeatedly on the big one’s head. Fists drew back out of frame and shot into view rapidly as he made short work of his final opponent.
Corrigan grabbed the final kid in a bear hug of his own, squeezing until I heard bones snap. Then, he whispered, “I love you,” and bit off the kid’s bottom lip.
Someone grabbed him from behind, pulling him along saying the cops were coming as Corrigan screamed about wanting to show ‘Brad’ how much he loved him. He lifted the unconscious form over his head and dropped him onto his knee as he knelt, probably breaking the kid’s spine. Then the video was jostled and glitch as he ran from the cops.
I advanced to the next video, which was another animal torture. I went to the next one, and then the next.
Three hours later, I was left feeling numb and disheartened. I’d seen hundreds, possibly thousands, of murders in person and on video over the years, but never so many at one time and the techniques used so varied—and that was with Andi fast-forwarding through entire sections. His count of seventy-six humans was correct, but he’d neglected to include the multiple rapes of both men and women, extended torture sessions, and mutilation of various creatures in his figures, which is why there were so many videos.
Branch Corrigan had been a sick individual. He’d done things to some of his victims that I hadn’t even heard of before. I was glad he was dead.
With Andi’s help, I spent the next two hours cross-referencing faces of his victims with unsolved murders across the district. Of the known victims, we were able to verify that the bodies of fifty-three of them had been discovered and were listed as unsolved. Another two of Corrigan’s victims had been found and an innocent person had been tried and convicted for murder. Police weren’t perfect and neither was the judicial system. Unfortunately, in those two cases, everyone was wrong and those men were serving life sentences at Sabatier Island.
The sickness in my stomach from earlier eased slightly with the knowledge that we’d be able to finally give all those families definitive answers about what happened to their loved ones. Closure wouldn’t relieve their pain, but it was all that I could offer them. It was something.
The others in the videos were John and Jane Doe’s. No facial recognition matches on missing persons or bodies that had been discovered. Either Corrigan had a very good dumping spot where nobody had found more than twenty bodies, or he’d done something else with them. Given the level of evil I’d witnessed throughout a lifetime of depravity, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he disposed of the bodies by eating them.
Which reminded me, I hadn’t eaten anything all morning and I had a meeting to go to in about an hour.
“Andi, I need some food before I go meet with Voodoo.”
“I’ll order street tacos and have them delivered.”
“Thanks. I feel like I need to wash a few years of filth off of me.” Watching all those videos made me feel dirty, inside and out. A shower would do something about the exterior feelings; but only time would cleanse my mind.
Drake went to search Ortega’s house on the warrant we had rushed through the court while I went to the Easytown Dockyards to talk to Tommy Voodoo about the activities of his employee, Farouk Karimov. Besides the ineffectual search of his tiny apartment, nobody had seen the guy and I wanted to talk to him. His name had come up in connection with Henderson, Ortega, Corrigan, and the city’s synthaine problem. The guy got around.
The lobby of the Marie Leveau Shipping Company was exactly as I’d remembered it from the last time I was here. The two receptionists still sat at their twin desks immediately in front of the entryway, switching between answering phone calls and typing reports with an ease that boggled my non-office worker mind.
Betty, the brunette, was a refurbished sex droid. Voodoo had given her an AI upgrade and sat her ass here in this chair. She’d almost shot me in the back one time with zero emotions or thoughts beyond the fact that she was told to keep people from passing an imaginary line on the floor. She was a real hoot.
Anastasia, on the other hand, was blonde, stunningly beautiful, and one hundred percent human—well, one hundred percent cloned from a human, with all of the original’s flaws and imperfections removed. Other women may come and go in Tommy Voodoo’s life, but Anastasia had wrapped him around her little finger. I felt like I owed her a huge debt of gratitude since she’d been instrumental in getting him to cooperate with me when he was scared that doing so would cost him his life when Biologiqué International was kidnapping people, cloning them, and then murdering the victims.
“Betty. Anastasia,” I said when I walked in. “You girls behaving?”
“That depends on your definition of behaving, Detective Forrest,” Betty responded. I’d noticed that, interestingly, the droid usually spoke first and seemed to be the de facto respondent for questions aimed at both of them. I wondered if it had to do with her robotic brain being able to process multiple tasks at once, whereas Anastasia’s human brain needed to focus more to complete her work.
“Mr. Ladeaux is a lucky man,” I chuckled.
“He is prosperous with numerous successful business ventures, Detective. The old saying goes that quantity has a quality all of its own.”
I blinked in surprise. Betty’s AI was able to learn, and then more or less correctly correlate axioms into conversation. As far as I knew, that was something that even Paxton Himura hadn’t done.
“Wow, Betty. Your AI is advancing rapidly.”
“Thank you, Detective. Performing the mundane duties of this position allows me the time to scour the cybersphere, interacting with millions of people online. I am learning from them.”
“Kinda scary, isn’t it?” Anastasia muttered.
“A little,” I admitted. “With
an unlimited ability to process data and the capacity to learn from every human and computer on the planet, she could become either a force for good or a force for evil.”
“With as much hate as people spew at one another in the cybersphere, I don’t think I want to know what she’s learning,” the clone stated.
“Mr. Ladeaux has given me enough leeway to learn from the world around me, in all of its forms. Even with the ability to learn and adapt my programming to meet emerging requirements, I am not able to violate the First Law of Robotics, so you have nothing to fear.”
I glanced at Anastasia and then back to Betty. “I’m sorry. I don’t know the laws of robotics.”
“There are three, originally formulated by one of the fathers of the science fiction literary genre, Isaac Asimov. The First Law of Robotics states that a robotic entity may not harm a human. So, while Anastasia is a clone, I could not physically assault her since she is human.”
“Hmpf,” I grunted. “Sounds like a load of crap to me. I’ve been plenty beat up by robots.”
“Yes, I have read the police files, they—”
“You what?”
“I read the police files of your robotic killer case. The robots in question weren’t acting on their own, they were being controlled by Harold Wilson. Even when he was no longer directly controlling them, he’d reprogrammed the droids.”
“So if you learn all of this stuff from the cybersphere, and then somebody reprograms you, you still wouldn’t be able to kill?”
“If I were to retain my knowledge of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, then I would not be able to harm a human. However, if they wipe them from my memory, then I may be capable of harming a human. Does this make sense?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It does. Take the police drones, for example. They are programmed with a massive set of instructions and reactionary protocols, but they’re not connected to the cybersphere. They’re connected back to MainFrame, for reporting and specialized control situations, but they mostly operate on their own. I think.”
To be honest, no one really knew how much control MainFrame had over the drones on their routine interactions with citizens, so the drones may have been operating on their own. Obviously, the programmers didn’t give two shits about Betty’s laws of robotics.
“So, how did you read private police reports?” I asked, bringing up the question I’d originally intended to ask.
“Most police reports are not protected, Detective,” Betty stated. “You simply need to know where to look. If they are stored in a publicly-accessible medium, then I am within my legal rights to access the documents.”
“You don’t have rights, Betty. You’re a droid. Droids are not afforded any of the protections given under the law.”
“You are correct. I was simply making a statement that anyone, whether they are droid or human, can access files on the police internal network. They are not particularly well guarded.” She seemed to pout, then began typing again.
Without looking up, Betty stated, “I have read the Internal Affairs file on you, Detective Forrest. You may want to consider a rebuttal.”
“Wait. What report?” I asked in confusion, reaching for my phone. “Andi, is the IA report available?”
“I am not aware that it is. Let me check once again.” She paused and then said, “Yes, Zach. The report released four minutes ago. I only scan every thirty minutes to save bandwidth. Give me a moment to read the report.”
She only took about five seconds to read the documents before her voice emitted from my headphone. “The report filed against you by the NOPD IA Division is fairly damning.”
“Shit. Excuse me, ladies,” I said. “I’m going to go have a seat in the waiting area. Can you please just let Mr. Ladeaux know that I’m here for our appointment?”
“He’s already been notified,” Betty stated.
“Of course he has,” I muttered as I went to the uncomfortable, clear plastic chairs that the lobby boasted. “Andi, I need the charge sheet sent to my phone, now.”
“There’s not a formal charge sheet, Zach. You are not being arrested. Internal Affairs utilizes a recapitulation of findings; which is simply a one-page summary of the report.”
“Okay, fine goddammit. I don’t care what they call it. I need that sent to me so I can review it now.”
“Understood. I just sent it.”
I opened the file she sent me and skimmed through the opening remarks until I came to the findings. “Those sonsabitches,” I muttered.
“Problem, Detective Forrest?” a familiar, weak voice asked.
I glanced up, putting away my phone as I did so. “Nothing I can’t handle, Mr. Ladeaux. Thank you for taking the time to meet with me.”
“You’re always welcome here. I hope you know that by now.”
I walked beside him as he led the way down the hallway. Once again, he took me into the duplicate office, not the real thing that he used when he was scared for his life during the clone crisis. I asked him about it.
“Oh, this office is just slightly bigger and I spend more time in here than in the other one. Plus…” He pressed his finger against his computer screen and a portion of the wall faded away, becoming translucent. Through the shelves of sports memorabilia, I could see the Dockyards as workers scurried around unloading ships and moving cargo.
“Nice view.”
“Thank you. The other office is truly in the center of the building, so a true view like this isn’t possible. I can always tell a difference between the real thing and a vidscreen.”
He cleared his throat, indicating that it was time to get down to business.
“Right,” I replied. “I’m investigating the city’s cyborgs. We’ve taken down several chop shops that are responsible for creating them.”
“I heard about your raids yesterday. Good work, Detective. There are probably twenty more where those came from.”
“Do you know of any?”
“Just rumors. Cybernetic enhancements are here to stay. There are plenty of uses for the technology that are not criminally motivated,” he stated. “The edge they give manual laborers, for example, could be used to great effect. If a man can up his stamina or strength, then he is more useful to the company he works for, thus increasing his job security. I think if you take a good, hard look around, you may find all sorts of people who are willing to take that step in order to keep their jobs. Hell, professional sports are full of enhanced individuals and everyone cheers for them,” he said, gesturing at the autographed footballs on the shelves. “Why should it be any different for someone who busts their ass all day long for a much smaller paycheck?”
I jutted my chin toward the window. “Are any of your workers out there enhanced?”
He shrugged. “I’m the owner and CEO of several large corporations, Detective; most of which rely on manual, human labor. I don’t typically interact with my employees. There are several layers of middle management between us. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I have enhanced employees working in my companies. My employees are scared that they’ll be replaced by robots and drones, so they’ll do whatever they can to keep the edge.”
“Are you going to replace them?”
He snorted in laughter. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. That’s why I asked the damn question, Mr. Ladeaux.”
“In the long run—about six years—it would be profitable to replace two humans with a single droid, but I can’t afford to do that across the board all at once. A run-of-the-mill droid, not a skinjob, costs around one-and-a-quarter million. It quickly goes up in price for artificial skin, adaptive AI, and all the other things that my pleasure droids have. My workers earn an average of a hundred K each. You figure one droid could replace two shifts and have to be powered down for the third shift, so it would earn out in about six years.”
“And you don’t have several hundred million just sitting around.”
“Exactly. I see these protests by the city’s workers and I
laugh. Of course, everyone has a story about knowing somebody who was replaced by a droid or their job got downsized to an AI instructing hundreds of students at once, but it’s not realistic to believe that droids are suddenly going to flood the market and take all the jobs. They are too expensive, for now.”
I hadn’t thought of it in that respect. The astronomical costs associated with the robotic industry did make it nearly impossible to replace all of the workers like they feared. Outside of a few megacorporations, it couldn’t be done. Maybe a phased approach over several years or decades, but the average small business simply couldn’t do it. I’d have to dig into the feasibility of Amir’s plan to add a droid; he didn’t pay his workers anything near a hundred thousand.
“Good point,” I said aloud. “It doesn’t seem practicable to replace an entire workforce.”
“It’s not. That’s one of the main reasons I’m concerned with advancing my partnership with Cybertronic Solutions beyond companionship droids. If I can reduce the price of advanced worker droids, I’d abandon human workers in a heartbeat.” He pointed toward the door. “The only reason I have Betty out there is because she’s refurbished from one of my clubs. Otherwise I couldn’t have justified the up-front cost.”
“So why all the sex bots then?”
He leaned back, “Because there’s a huge market for it. People can pick up a hooker, and all of the associated diseases, anywhere. But a sex droid? Only Easytown, Las Vegas, New York, Amsterdam, and Bangkok have them—unless someone wants to purchase their own, but the cost is prohibitive.”
I nodded, thinking about Andi’s constant request that I give her a CS01 body—at the cost of two million dollars.
“Besides, government-mandated health care for sex workers is astronomical. It makes their per-unit cost more than a droid in just a few years, more if one of them gets injured on the job, but I have to keep them in stock too since the market demands options.”