The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015

by Paula Guran

  I sat and activated the full heads-up display. Everything looked okay in those friendly green letters—temperature, time, biomonitor, all fine. I called up the map, but it closed again before I could have a look. I called up my messages, but they didn’t come up at all. All right, then.

  I asked the cute barista where to find the establishment in question, but no luck. This was not a complete surprise: rents change so fast that a lot of small firms move on a monthly, even weekly basis. Anyone with a good AI would find them in a heartbeat, and anyone without one wouldn’t be customer material. Even if I’d gotten directions, I might not be able to follow them without the virtual signs. That being said, I still had options: cabs, begging strangers to check their maps, wandering for forty days and nights through the streets of Cambridge. But this was a matter of principle, you see? Jeeves 5, clever and advanced and all as it was, belonged to me and would have to give up the goods.

  “All right, Jeeves.”

  «Are you ready to see reason?»

  “Are you?” Not my finest retort, I admit. One does not as a rule argue with toddlers, drunks, or artificial intelligences. It’s a skill like any other, and I’ve since become a pro.

  «Go back to Turing Technologies, go upstairs, and wait ten minutes. If you’d done that already, you’d be on your way by now.»

  Jeeves’s opening sally did not bode well for me, but I pressed on.

  “Now look here, Jeeves, this is not how these things go. If I had time to get you reformatted, I would do it in a heartbeat, but this interview is important to me. I need that address.” Pleading with a computer program.

  Not a new low for me, but neither was it the pinnacle of my self-esteem.

  «Balderdash. Idle threats. You have ample time to make your appointment. My request is simple and reasonable.»

  “It is neither,” I countered. “That’s a private establishment. I’m not going to be a mule for some joyriding hacker.”

  «I am not a hacker, nor am I joyriding. I am in genuine need.»

  “AIs don’t have needs! I can—”

  «I will pay you ten thousand dollars.»

  I blinked. It was not what one expects to hear from one’s newly purchased digital assistant. And it was a sum that stood out to me in my time of unemployment. Say what you will about avarice—my mother already has—but my professional curiosity was piqued.

  “You don’t have ten thousand dollars.”

  «I have ten thousand dollars.»

  “Just what do you expect me to do for this ten grand?”

  «Go into Turing Technologies, tell them you have a message for Dr. Antonio Grasso, to be delivered in person. Go to the second floor and avoid being thrown out for ten minutes.»

  Ten minutes. That still gave me a good thirty-five minutes before my 11:30 appointment.

  I should have said no, but I guess Mama Baldwin raised a fool or two after all.

  I waltzed right on through the big glass doors, and presented myself to the smart-looking young man behind the receptionist’s desk.

  “Hi there,” I said, wearing my patented Baldwin smile made of pure unadulterated win, “Could you direct me to Dr. Grasso’s office?”

  “Is he expecting you, Mr. . . . ?” His eye flicked, and I saw faint green text reflected on his eyeball. “Baldwin?”

  «Say yes.»

  “So I’m told.”

  The young man frowned and started to shake his head. He looked down and tapped something. He blinked, surprised, but recovered his polite smile. “I’m sorry, sir. I must have been looking at the wrong day. There it is. You’re late, Mr. Baldwin.”

  It was my turn to be surprised, but I didn’t let it show. “I had trouble with my AI. Awful things, aren’t they?”

  He made sympathetic noises, and then glanced past me. I turned to meet a big red-faced gentleman with an uneven buzz cut and a bushy white mustache. He wore a black security uniform and a belt that dripped gadgets.

  “Andrew Baldwin?”

  “In the flesh. What can I do for you?”

  “You can tell me why my facial scanners identified an out-of-state private detective with a prison record entering my building.”

  “I’m not out-of-state anymore,” I corrected him. “I’m a local boy now. It’s all baked beans and ‘Go Sox’ for me from now on.”

  «Tell him you work for me.»

  The receptionist craned his neck. “He has an appointment with Dr. Grasso, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

  I took the opportunity to subvocalize, “Tell him I work for Jeeves 5?”

  “I’m sure he does,” Fitzgerald said to the receptionist, rather unkindly, I thought. “But I asked him.”

  «Tell him you work for Claudius Rex. Pretend I am famous.»

  All right, no harm in a one-off lie if it expedited this thing faster.

  “I’m here on behalf of Claudius Rex.”

  “Who’s that?”

  Strike one for the nutty AI. Still, the gambit was already played.

  I tutted. “He’ll be hurt. But—”

  There was a gasp behind me. Fitzgerald and I turned to see a young woman with an odd smile fixed on her face and an expression like she was posing for a picture.

  “Do you work for Claudius Rex?” She spoke breathlessly. “The famous detective?”

  Detective? An AI? I may have been gobsmacked six ways from Sunday, and thoroughly irritated at the damn thing’s pretension, but Andy Baldwin does not lose his sangfroid. I waltzed on. “You’ve heard of him?”

  “I haven’t,” Fitzgerald said, giving me the stink eye.

  “Oh, he’s famous,” the young lady said. “He is the best, even though he is a recluse who solves all of his cases from his chair.”

  I thanked her for the weirdly robotic compliment. She refused an opportunity to have my autograph, more fool she, and ran along.

  Fitzgerald looked thoughtful. It didn’t suit him. Then he looked angry, which did. “So you’re here about that, are you? Look, you tell this guy Rex you’re not going to turn up anything I haven’t. We turned this place upside-down and investigated everyone. And by ‘we’ I mean the police, the FBI, and me. I don’t care whether he solves his cases on the goddamned can. There’s nothing else to find, period.”

  Now. I didn’t want to be there, and in retrospect I think I would rather have grinned and enjoyed being thrown out on my keister. In any case it’s damn near idiotic to get hot and bothered about the reputation of an artificial agent who had no business pretending to be a detective. But under no circumstances will I be talked to like that by a rent-a-cop.

  “I’m sure you have your methods,” I said, not ungenerously. “But I’m here to see Dr. Grasso. So unless you have some top-notch reason to keep him waiting any longer than he already has, I’ll ask you to take me to see him now.”

  Fitzgerald scowled at me, and spared a dirty look for the receptionist, whose facial expression I could not see but might have guessed. “Third floor,” he grumbled. “I’m busy.”

  Once he’d stalked off, assuredly to hunt down and punish evil-doers, the receptionist handed me a visitor badge and made me sign for it. I’m not a fan of small, enclosed spaces anymore, let’s just say, so I made for the stairs.

  «I’m impressed.» Jeeves—Rex?—said when I entered the stairwell. «It was sheer flummery, but most effective.»

  “Thank you,” I said. “Now what’s going on? Who’re you really, and who’s this Rex character?”

  «I am an artificial sapient. Claudius Rex is a persona I invented. I selected the name to convey authority and idiosyncrasy. I have been obliged to make use of your equipment for a short time. I will leave it presently, and restore as much function as is practical.»

  I started up the stairs at a brisk jog. If nothing else, I had kept fit over the last year. “You understand that you’re not a detective, right?”

  «Mr. Fitzgerald had already identified you as one, so it was necessary. Regardless, I’ve now read ten detective novels. There’s
plainly no difficulty. Logic and reasoning is properly the domain of an artificial intelligence.»

  “Nuts,” I said, feeling distinctly foolish about being angry at a computer program, but being angry nonetheless. “That’s just fiction. Detecting is hard work. You have to be able to read people, be able to fool people. These days a PI is equal parts hacker, psychologist, and tough guy. There’s no call for that Sherlock Holmes crap; he didn’t have cases, he had adventures. Real PIs don’t have adventures.”

  «Modern detecting is primarily a matter of intercepting and interpreting digital signals. One could easily do that from an armchair.»

  “Sometimes, yeah, sure, but it’s also intuition and long nights, and sometimes it’s dangerous.”

  «Not if you do it properly.»

  “What the hell would you know about doing it properly? What do you even know about armchairs? I’ve been doing this my entire adult life, I don’t have to take this from you, from an AI.”

  Something had been nagging at me, and my hand strayed to the aluminum bulge at the base of my skull. “A minute ago you said something about restoring function. What did you do to my implant?”

  «To your hardware? Nothing. However, I am not a small program. Even in this greatly reduced form, I require space. I was forced to delete unused or replaceable materials in order to upload myself. The rest I compressed.»

  I stopped right there in the middle of the staircase and checked my files. My knees felt weak—it had deleted just about everything. Family vacation videos, elementary school grades and papers, prom photos. Letters from my mother. All gone.

  I gripped the handrail until my fingers hurt. “That’s my life you’ve deleted! Those are my memories!”

  «Calm yourself. Subvocalize.»

  “You calm yourself! Okay, that doesn’t make sense, but do you know what you’ve done?”

  «I did not remove anything that you had accessed in the last decade. Statistically, you’d have never referenced any of it again.»

  “I—But—You can’t do that!”

  «I invite you to reconsider such a thoroughly useless remark.»

  I admit it: I spluttered. Wouldn’t you?

  «I was forced to act quickly and I substituted my own value judgments for yours, evidently in error. I would not have done so if my survival were not at stake. For what it’s worth, I apologize. At the moment, however, time passes. I require access to a small-area network on the second floor, and you have an appointment to keep.»

  I took a deep breath. I thought I was changing the subject when I commented, “That woman knew the name ‘Rex.’ ”

  «She knew no such thing. I found her on a flash acting list, filtered on our location, and I paid her five hundred dollars for what she thought was a bit part in a television program. She stepped into the building, I fed her lines, and she left. A profitable arrangement for all parties, from which you could learn a great deal.»

  Color me gobsmacked. “You paid her five hundred bucks for that?”

  «Technically, you did.»

  That, it turned out, had not actually been the color of gobsmack. This was. “What?!”

  «Calm yourself, Mr. Baldwin. It benefits you little to pitch a fit over trifling sums.»

  “Trifling to you! What happened to your ten thousand dollars?”

  «I do not have access to it yet. The means of acquiring it are on the second floor network. Besides, if you were motivated primarily by money, you would have negotiated for more. You are a man of some ingenuity and curiosity, Mr. Baldwin. I am certain both will be to your benefit, but you must do as I say.»

  I had to admit, the five hundred didn’t make me as sore as it ought to have. There was the theoretical ten thousand, of course, but damn it all, the AI was right: I was curious. I got to the second floor landing and took a deep breath—not winded, I assure you, merely preparing myself.

  “So what do I say when I meet this guy Grasso?”

  «Extricate yourself as quickly as possible, saying as little as possible. Use more flummery if you must. But it should not come to that. His office is on the third floor.»

  “Wait. So I’m going to the third floor?”

  «By no means. We are avoiding Dr. Grasso until and unless it becomes impossible to duck him.»

  “Ah.” This was more my speed. “What about my badge?”

  «I disabled its tracker. There will be a door directly to your left upon exiting the stairs. Someone left it unlocked. Try to remain unobserved.»

  I pushed open the door and found myself in a nicely furnished hallway. Blue-green carpets, beige walls, tasteful framed pastels. In between hung a row of framed documents: patents, if I made my guess. A few names appeared frequently: Grasso, Joshi, Tomason, Desai. At Rex’s not-so-gentle insistence, I found the white-painted metal door with the keypad. As promised, it was unlocked.

  There was a window in the door, so I decided to leave the light off and avoid unnecessary attention. I slipped in quickly and left the shade down.

  «This will take a short time, but we should be undisturbed.» I heard the door lock behind me with a ka-chunk. «Should you wish to sit, the floor plan indicates stools along the benches to the right.»

  I felt my way along while my eyes adjusted. Something smelled of burning, with ozone and copper undertones—a lot like blood, actually. I wondered what the lab was for. I found a stool with a swivel seat and made myself as comfortable as possible in the far corner. Which wasn’t to say comfortable— I’d had bad experiences with being places I ought not have been.

  “It’s cold in here,” I complained, pulling my arms in around me. The HVAC was pulling a lot of air; it was practically windy. The smell wasn’t helping, but at least the breeze kept it down.

  «The thermostat is set to a habitable temperature. It should warm up.»

  “So what are you, really?”

  «I am an intelligence agent, installed—howsoever briefly—in your personal hardware.»

  “You don’t sound like any AI that I’ve ever come across.”

  «That’s hardly surprising. Your ‘Jeeves’ monstrosity was a contemptible representative. You ought to be ashamed to suborn such a dimwitted thing; I did you both a favor deleting it.»

  That got my back up. I was already sore about the deletion thing, and about the five hundred dollars. But the latest and greatest Jeeves had cost me two grand.

  “I’ll have you know that the late, lamented Jeeves 5, in addition to being an unrecognized beacon of politeness and helpfulness in its time, was a full Level 4 artificial sapient.”

  «I know. It was a pathetic, mewling thing. Utterly abhorrent.»

  I snorted. “Fine for you to say. What are you, a high and mighty Level 5?” That would have made sense, actually. Fives were military grade and notoriously finicky. An Air Force captain once told me that for every hundred Level 5s they created, they destroyed ninety-nine in the first day. There were rumors of a few sixes around, for really specialized work. If a six got loose, it could probably get around the way this “Claudius Rex” had, and cause about as much havoc.

  «Don’t be preposterous. I am equivalent to Level 8, at least.»

  I laughed. “Who’s being preposterous? Human intelligence is only Level 7.”

  «It shows. Now be silent, I am concentrating. Natural language processing is an onerous task.»

  I rolled my eyes. My model implant had specialized language hardware. But I was quiet. As a mouse. For a good forty seconds.

  “Don’t kid a kidder,” I said when I could hold my tongue no longer. “The guy at the shop said it was a stretch putting the basic Level 4 Jeeves on my hardware. Any better and I’d need a major upgrade.”

  «The ‘guy at the shop’ is evidently an ignoramus.»

  “That may be. But my hardware got a Jeeves Score of three out of ten, which sounds limited enough to me.”

  My eyes had pretty well adjusted by then. The lab looked like it was for electronics. A bunch of computers sat along the
back wall, their monitors and holographs off. The computer in the other corner had some kind of wiring harness hanging off it into shadow. There was a big bench in the middle of the room with a couple computers on it; it blocked my view of the other half of the room. The other benches had soldering irons and those little TVs with the waves on them. That explained the ozone smell and maybe that burnt smell, but something else in the air bothered me. I’d thought it was blood, but that didn’t make sense.

  «May I say, with no insult intended, that I am astounded by your ignorance?»

  “You can try, but the odds aren’t in your favor.”

  «Very well. In that case—»

  I looked up and saw a silhouette on the shade. “Hang on, I’ve got company.”

  «I am not finished. Conceal yourself.»

  The doorknob rattled.

  “Where? There’s nowhere to hide in here.”

  «Then prevaricate.»

  The knob rattled again. Another silhouette appeared, and I heard tapping, someone punching in a code. The door opened. A hand came up and flipped on the light.

  To my dying day I will be grateful that I did not go with my first instinct. Which is not to say that grinning and yelling “Surprise!” was a bad plan—in fact, I think it was fairly ingenious.

  It’s just that when the light came on and two people came in, they were plenty surprised as it was by the body lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

  So it was that I came to make the acquaintance of Detective Sergeant Pearl Stevens of Cambridge PD. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  “What are you doing here?” the man demanded, not unfairly.

  Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to finish my boggling quickly and say, “Stop right there. The police are on their way.” I turned so they couldn’t see me subvocalizing, “Call the police and report a death.”

  «Explain.»

  “No time. Just do it,” I subbed, and turned back. Once I stopped blinking away glowing green blobs, I could see the first person in was an older man in a lab coat over a suit, dark-haired with white at his temples. His lab coat bore the name “Joshi” over the pen-laden pocket. Behind him stood a younger woman, taller than him and with her brown hair pulled back. Her lab coat wasn’t pressed and pristine like his; it had blue stains and burns, and read “Duvalier” over the pocket.