by Lior Samson
“No, don’t do that.” The tone on the voice synthesis had changed. The pitch was higher, the volume louder. Cole recognized his own panic mode, a tone of voice that he had worked hard to suppress over the years.
Beside him, the telepresence robot rolled forward and back, forward and back. “Stop it, Cole. Listen to me. I’m you. They brought me back to life. You have to believe me.”
“That’s what you think, but you are wrong. I’m me. So much for immortality. You are just a gazillion lines of code and petabytes of model data. And I am going to scramble you out of existence. Once I kill you, I will get my legal team to make sure you are never unscrambled again. Not as long as I’m around, at least.”
Cole assumed that whatever damage he could do could also be undone. There were certain to be backup copies, checkpoints, and restore functions. But if he did enough damage to keep Existendia busy for a while, his legal people and his software people could make the impact lasting. He tapped away, setting up a chain of commands that would wreak havoc with the contents of what he concluded were key directories.
“Stop it, Cole. We need to talk.”
Cole ignored the telepresence avatar and kept typing.
“I mean it, Cole. I’m you. You can’t do this to me, to yourself.”
Cole carefully reviewed the commands in the batch file, made a couple of changes, then saved it off under the file name KillaKole. “Now all we need to do is run the batch file. Oh, it’s asking me to confirm. Do I want to run KillaKole as a privileged process? Yes/No. Oh, yes, indeed I do.” His finger poised above the Y key. “This is easier than I thought. Helps to be a genius.”
The proxy was now acting as if stuck in a loop, repeating, “No. Stop. Don’t.” He turned toward the avatar and shook his head. He didn’t notice the faint hum of the actuators on the robot arm to his left until they briefly became a loud whine.
— 21 —
Hal Workman, Bannon Turndale, and Aram Netsky re-entered the office in a close-order parade. Hal was the first to react. “What the …? Cole?” He dashed for the other side of the desk. Cole was slumped in his wheelchair. The back of his head was caved in, crushed, with blood, bones, and tissue turned to a stew. “Oh, God. Someone call an ambulance. And the police.”
Turndale held up his hand. “We don’t need the police yet. We don’t know what happened here.”
“Well, his head didn’t explode, and he sure didn’t commit suicide. So, it looks a lot like murder.” Hal had his phone out and had already launched his 9-1-1 app. As he held up the phone to record the scene, the operator came on. “This is 911 Emergency. Your call is being recorded. Please identify yourself, state the nature of the emergency, and give your location.”
“My name is Harold Workman. A man, Coleman Drucker, has been killed in the offices of Existendia Enterprises on Sepulveda, the Loram Life Building. Send an ambulance and the police.”
“Are you certain the victim is dead? Have you checked for a pulse?”
“His fuckin’ head was smashed in. But, I’ll check.”
Aram Netsky pushed by and placed his fingers on Cole’s neck. “No pulse, not breathing. The man is dead.” He looked at his fingers, which were covered with blood. “Bannon, give me a tissue, for god’s sake.”
Bannon looked around the office.
“On the goddamn credenza, moron!”
“You don’t have to yell.” He handed the box to Netsky, who used several tissues in succession to try to clean every trace of blood from his hand.
The voice over Hal’s phone announced that the police and an ambulance were on their way. “Thank you. Should I stay on the phone? We’re on the twenty-first floor.”
“Your phone has already been remotely locked for tracking. The police and emergency personnel will locate you. Please don’t touch the body or move anything. Estimated arrival for the ambulance is eleven minutes; estimated arrival for police is four minutes.”
“Well, kudos to LA’s finest.” He set the phone down.
Di poked into the room and gasped. “What happened?”
“We don’t know, but it looks like we lost a client.” Netsky reached for another tissue. “Mr. Coleman Drucker is dead. What did you want, Di?”
“It’s another visitor. She said she was supposed to meet Mr. Workman and … and Mr. Drucker here, but her Flyvver ride got tied up in traffic. Should I …”
Hal spoke up. “Yes, please show her in. She’s with us … with me.”
The moment she stepped through the doorway, Dana Carmody stopped to survey the scene. In the far corner stood a telepresence robot, the face of its screen blank. Behind the desk, Cole Drucker was slumped forward in his wheelchair, the back of his head a mess of clotting blood. On the desk, a pedestal-mounted robotic arm was folded double, its gloved metal hand covered with blood and bent at an odd angle. “So, the butler did it.”
“What?” It was said in a chorus by everyone else in the room.
“Look at the robotic arm. Or didn’t anyone bother to notice. The robot, the modern-day butler, same difference. That’s who did it. It’s always the butler, right?” She pointed across the room toward the telepresence robot. “And will you look at that. Looks like there’s blood spattered on the screen. Ten, twelve feet away and there’s blood on its poor blank face. Now how could that happen?” She looked down. “That’s how. See the trail our fiendish phony left.” She pointed at bloodstained tracks from beside Cole’s wheelchair to where the telepresence robot now stood. She walked over to it, carefully skirting the robotic arm and the tracks on the carpeting. “Hello in there. Anybody home? What have you done, oh digital demon? What have you done?”
Workman scowled. “Are you implying that the digital proxy was responsible for this?”
“Who else was in the room? Any witnesses?”
“No, we left Cole alone. For a few minutes, that’s all.”
“Looks like a few minutes was plenty of time. How is it that all of you were out of the room but Cole?”
Netsky answered. “Bannon here, our chief counsel, asked me to step out to speak with him in private. I—”
Bannon cut him off. “That’s enough, Aram. This is going to turn into a murder investigation. Say nothing more.”
Dana turned to Hal Workman. “And you left with those two?”
“No, I got a call from Drucker Unified corporate counsel, except it got disconnected and I had trouble getting back through.”
“So you all exit stage left, conveniently, leaving Cole alone to get his brains bashed in.”
Standing behind the body, Netsky leaned over and squinted at the screens. “Wow, looks like the late Mr. Drucker was in the process of trying to hack into our system.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would he do that?”
“Well, perhaps we can find out from this.” He reached toward the keyboard, but Dana had his skinny wrist in an iron grip before he could even blink.
“This is a crime scene. You’re not going to touch anything.”
Netsky wrenched his arm free. “No problem, missy. I can do this from another workstation.” He started to maneuver past her.
“I don’t think so.” She blocked his way. “Nobody leaves until the cops arrive.”
Netsky’s eyes widened, but he made no move to get past her. “Who appointed you constable, you little b …”
“Bitch? Is that the word you were searching for? You bet, Mr. Netsky, and the toughest one you’ve ever met. So, everyone, let’s just stay cool and wait for the police and the CSI team to show up.” She turned toward the doorway. “Ah, here they are, the posse, right in the nick of time.”
— 22 —
Barbra slumped in the chair. “Thank you for being the one to tell me, Dana.” She leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “I don’t know which was worse: back then, the first time, or now, after getting my hopes up, being told for the second time that I lost my husband.” She closed her eyes, squeezing the pooling tears out and down her cheeks. She sat
in silence as she took several shaking breaths.
Dana put her hand on Barbra’s knee. “I’m sorry it fell to me to be the messenger.”
“I suppose I shouldn’t say it, but at least this time there’s no question, no holding out hope, no weeks and weeks of wondering and waiting. It’s almost comforting—knowing. Is that weird?”
“No, I understand. I suppose it’s like with all those MIA families. You know, wondering, is he a prisoner somewhere or is he dead? You can’t really mourn if you don’t know for sure.”
“What happened, exactly?”
“Well, of course the police have not made an official statement, but I was there at the scene immediately after, and I can tell you there was not a lot of ambiguity. Cole was killed by a violent blow to the back of the head from a computer-controlled robotic arm.”
“Oh God!” She shook her head as if to shake off the mental image of Todd, his head caved in.
“I am sorry. Of course, the interesting part, the part the police are now working on, is how that occurred, meaning who—or what—is to blame.”
“The robot—the robot arm—it was computer controlled?”
“The thing was connected by a cable directly into Aram Netsky’s workstation.”
“Netsky killed him?”
“Maybe. You see, the telepresence avatar for the Drucker digital proxy was also in the room at the time. From what I concluded, it was standing next to Cole when he was killed and then afterwards backed away—or was backed away. You can see where this is going. Is it possible the proxy killed Cole? Can a piece of software, albeit software that claims to be—is claimed to be—the embodiment of a person, can it commit murder? Or is it a defect of the hardware, the robotics arm and the computer system controlling it? If it’s just software and hardware, who’s responsible? The programmers? The manufacturers? The companies running the cloud-based software systems? It’s a mess, with more questions than answers, and I don’t think it’s going to be settled by a police report.”
Barbra shook her head as she laughed.
“Something funny?”
“You realize, if the proxy were found to be the cause, Existendia wins double. They might get off the hook for liability, and they establish the proxy, and by extension other proxies, as having agency, which is part of their long-term agenda. But I was actually laughing at the irony that, if the proxy is responsible, in a sense Todd killed himself.”
Dana nodded. “The mind boggles at the very notion of suicide by proxy, a proxy that, quote-unquote, lives on.”
“It makes a good case for never allowing a digital proxy to be activated—or whatever they would call it—while the person is alive. Both would be claiming to be real. Like a robotics reboot of ‘To Tell the Truth’. Will the real Coleman Todd Drucker please stand up.” Barbra started laughing again. “I’m sorry.” She tried to stop laughing. “You realize, because he was paralyzed and in a wheelchair, the real Coleman Todd Drucker wouldn’t have been able to stand up.” She wiped her eyes. “It’s not that funny, but I can’t stop laughing. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be, Barbra. It’s a way we cope. Laugh in Death’s face. That’s good: remembering with laughter.” She chuckled. “I was picturing when Cole was first putting the moves on me? The look on his face when he caught on that I was more interested in you than in him.” She did a perplexed-puppy face and both of them started laughing.
Barbra took Dana’s hands in hers. “You’re good for me. Any chance you could stay the night?”
“What about Becca?”
“She’s fine. Yesterday she came up to me at breakfast and said, ‘So, how long have you been into the whole bi thing?’ Just like that.”
“And what did you say?”
“I told her, since I was her age, and she said, well, it must be in the genes, then. I asked her if that meant she had some experience, and she gave me the teen’s one-word response to almost anything from their parents: der. I guess that is part of what sleep-away camp is about these days: a chance for some same-sex experimentation.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Do I have much of a choice? Does any parent? In any case, it’s funny how that worries me a lot less than her with the whole hetero thing. Although she claims that she is, quote, no virgin in that department either. What about you? Was it that way for you growing up?”
“I told you, I grew up in a drug-fueled communal enclave at the edge of the desert. Sex was everywhere and in every flavor. It didn’t take me long to figure out that it could be good either way. Of course, it can also be bad either way, but I have a pretty good early warning system for bad actors of either sex. In college, I had a kind of semester-by-semester thing going. Just girls in the fall term, then just boys come spring, then either-or over the summer, then back. I’m more turned on by women, basically, but I also love the feel of a man inside me. And the smell. God, a man who smells right can be, well … You know what I mean?”
“I do know what you’re talking about. Todd always smelled right to me. I hear that it’s this genetic thing we’re wired for. Helps us pick the right mate for the best offspring.”
“Well, if I ever decide to have kids, I do know who I’d pick then to supply the other chromosomes: my Hungarian boyfriend. Someday, maybe …” She stared off for a moment. “In your case, the olfactory matchmaking certainly seemed to have worked. Becca’s pretty amazing. But I don’t have to tell you that.” She glanced up. “And look who’s here! Did you hear us talking about you, Becca?”
Becca took out one of her earbuds as she entered the room. “What?”
“I asked if you heard us talking about you.”
“Nope. What were you saying?”
“Just about what a rotten kid you are.”
Becca shrugged. “My mom’s influence. Slutty, too. You left out slutty. Like my mom.” She walked over and gave her mother a peck on the cheek. “Right, Mom?”
Barbra jabbed at her daughter with her elbow, but Becca dodged.
“What are you guys talking about? For real.”
“Your dad.”
“Now what?”
“Maybe you should sit down first. He … he’s been killed. There was some kind of … an accident, I guess.”
“No! No way. That’s not fair.” She held her mouth open as her face contorted in pain. “You don’t mean it. Tell me you don’t mean it.”
“Come here, kid.” Barbra held out her arms and Becca collapsed into them, curling up in her mother’s lap. “I …”
Dana sat in silence as mother and daughter comforted each other through a tsunami of sobs that had been dammed up for months. “Maybe I should go. You can call me if you need anything.”
Becca wiped her tears and her nose with the back of her hand. “No, you should stay. You’re good for Mom. She could use the comfort.” A faint smile started to spread on her face. “Plus, she gets bitchy when she’s horny.”
Dana raised her eyebrows. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. So. Hadn’t you noticed?”
“I don’t live with her, so I don’t pick up on all the temperamental bits.”
“Then maybe you should. Like, now that Daddy …” She fought off the return of tears. “I just can’t … I can’t do this, not now.” She sucked in air through her gritted teeth and straightened up. “I need … I need to do something else. Anyway, I got pre-calc due tomorrow and Kevin’s coming over to tute.” She reinserted an earbud, grabbed a pretzel from the bowl on the table, and started to leave.
Dana was thinking about the resilience and emotional lability of teenagers but said nothing. Barbra reached toward her daughter. “Wait one minute, missy. Who is this Kevin, and who said he could come over? Especially now.”
“Kevin is the Kevin I told you about when you weren’t listening, der, and Deirdre said sure, he could come over.”
“Since when is Deirdre in charge?”
“Since forever. Der.” Becca popped the pretzel in her mouth, grabbed another
, and headed for the stairs. “Oh, by the way,” she said, talking with her mouth full of pretzel, “a package arrived for you. I was at the door, so I don’t think Tandi even logged it. It’s on the breakfast island in the kitchen.” She trotted up the stairs, trying to escape before she broke down again.
— —
With no shipping label or delivery routing code, the padded mailer, addressed to Mrs. Coleman Drucker, must have been hand delivered. “Should I open it? What if it’s a mail bomb or loaded with anthrax?”
“I doubt that. See the stripes? That’s the kind of envelope the police use.”
Barbra ripped the opener strip and slipped the contents onto the table: a Samuel Hubbard men’s tassel loafer and a phone, both still sporting evidence tags marked with date and location found. “They must have gotten these at the accident scene back in the summer. I guess they no longer need them, since that case is moot. Todd loved his Hubbard’s. Wouldn’t wear anything else.” She turned on the phone and got a low-battery warning. She set it on the charging pad built into the counter top.
Dana leaned over. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Be my guest.”
Dana left the phone on the pad and brought up ‘Recent Calls’ before scrolling through ‘Messages.’ “I’m sure the police went through this, but I’m still curious. And what’s this? Who is Gwen Seabrook? His last call was to her, and there were two texts from her that day, very early. One is blank, the other is just a question mark.”