by Mel Odom
“Everything is optimum.” Upon recognition of my repaired state, I immediately felt compelled to get back to the NAPD offices. I noted that Jenny Crain had beaten her estimated time of repairs by six minutes and thirty-seven seconds. “Am I released?”
Jenny stood on one side of the room as her extra arms detached themselves and walked away on all fours like a lumbering, skeletal beast.
“You’re released from my care, but not from Haas-Bioroid. You still have a meeting with the neural programming tech.”
“Of course.” As soon as she said that, the imperative to be seen by that person dropped into my to do list.
“You know the way?”
“I do.”
“Good. Good luck in the future, Drake.” Jenny smiled at me. “Try not to be so rough on the hardware next time.”
I almost assured her that I would never knowingly damage Haas-Bioroid equipment, then I read her face and recognized that this was an attempt at humor. “Police work can be hazardous, but I will endeavor to be more gentle. Thank you for your aid.”
I walked toward the door, which irised open at my approach.
* * *
The repairs department was on the forty-eighth floor. The neural channeling research and development department, where I was headed, was on the seventy-third. I had never been above the eightieth floor. Those were corp offices and tight security made them almost another world.
I took the lift up to the seventy-third floor. The lift was in an atrium that ran through the center of Haas-Bioroid and afforded a large view of the corp. I knew the sight of the building’s immensity and everything that was going on there was designed to impress prospective clients. Neon bright holos advertised bioroid products in 3D. From cleaners to manufacturing workers to personal assistants, the full range of bioroids moved and worked.
Some of the newest additions to the compilation were the military bioroids. Armed with non-lethal weapons, a swarm of camouflaged bioroids invaded a building and quickly subdued the military force within its walls. The production was coded with the best graphics available, and the confrontations favored the bioroids as they absorbed hits and damage that would have rendered flesh-and-blood counterparts inoperable.
Or dead.
The military ads were a topic of controversy and they weren’t allowed to be shown as commercial product during regular media programming. However, Haas-Bioroid frequently got reviewed at NBN and in the rags, and the new military bioroids generated a lot of interest and speculation.
Curiously, the military bioroids had no faces, not even the silver eyes, just a hatchet-shaped head. Designers claimed that bioroids didn’t need features to be effective, and that putting faces on the mil-spec bioroids would be detrimental to their function. Bullets striking them in the head would carom off, not catch in an eye or mouth or cheekbone. Detractors claimed that the faceless appearance caused alarm in humans, triggering primal responses.
That facet was one of the prime debates, but no one was saying that the mil-spec bioroids wouldn’t be used at some point in the future as police SWAT teams, private security, or even military units on Mars to keep the peace. The only real question was when they would be eventually activated.
The building’s designers used a lot of transplas to allow viewing of the various components of Haas-Bioroid’s industry as well as the lunar landscape contained in Hypatia-C. Construction labs displayed the assembly of bioroids—those always made me feel uncomfortable. At that point they were empty vessels, had no neural programming inputted, and were almost blank slates except for some low-level circuit boards that reflected how the assembler bots were managing connections.
The discomfort I felt around them had magnified since I’d held Shelly Nolan in my arms after life had departed her.
“Yeah, those things give me the creeps, too.” Shelly stood beside me in the lift and held her arms folded around herself. My reflection in the transplas lift cage stood solitary.
We were alone in the lift, but I knew that we were not unmonitored. Haas-Bioroid’s security was excellent. PriRights did not exist within corp walls.
I couldn’t stop myself, though, from speaking, which was stimulating. “Was there ever a time I gave you ‘the creeps’?”
Shelly glanced at me and gave a little sad smile. Then she faded away.
The cage’s momentum and the increased microgravity I felt changed subtly right before my arrival on the seventy-third floor. I felt Shelly’s absence and I remained curious as to her answer.
When the lift doors opened, I strode out.
* * *
When I reached the door of the office where I was supposed to report, I waved my hand in front of the e-announcer, which read off my Haas-Bioroid model number and designation instead of my NAPD e-badge. I preferred being known as a homicide detective, though the distinction was small in the eyes of anyone else, and Haas-Bioroid still claimed me as one of their own.
The door opened and Miranda called out in her musical voice. “Drake, come in. I’ve been expecting you.”
As I stepped through her door into her office, some of the discomfort I’d been experiencing dropped away. Routine neural monitoring and modifications were handled by different techs. They mostly remained indifferent to the bioroids assigned to them.
Miranda was different. I’d first met her after nearly being destroyed by a rogue element of the military unit Shelly and I had crossed paths with while investigating the murder of Carman Dawes.
She sat in a contoured chair on the other side of the room. She was a petite woman with cocoa butter skin and her black hair woven into dreadlocks that featured gaily colored stone. Dressed in light blue scrubs festooned with brightly colored parrots, she sat with criss-crossed legs.
“Welcome.” She waved me to another contour chair directly opposite her only a meter away. “Please. Have a seat.”
I walked to the chair and wondered if it would hold my weight and if she had considered that when she’d proffered her invitation.
“The chair is much better constructed than you think, and this is the Moon, Drake. You’re not as heavy as you would be on Earth.”
Feeling more at ease about the idea of sitting, I sat.
She gazed at me in silence for a moment, looking directly into my silver eyes. Her forearms rested on her knees as she laced her hands together. “How are you doing, Drake?”
I held my hands out in front of me and turned them over. “I have been repaired. I am functioning optimally.”
“Succinct as ever.” Miranda sounded disappointed.
I felt the need to rectify that. Over the last few weeks of our association, during my routine maintenance, I had come to appreciate the clarity of her mind. “What would you like me to say?”
“I’d like to know more about your personal feelings. Your life.”
“My life is recorded in my case files with the NAPD. If you would like to review those, perhaps I could request permission. But I should warn you that the likelihood of that is exceedingly small. Most of the cases I have handled would be no problem, but some of them have covered sensitive situations.”
“Like the Gordon Holder assassination?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that matter with anyone outside the NAPD homicide squad.”
Miranda smiled forlornly and shook her head. “No, I know you’re not.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“To remind myself talking to you about certain matters is a struggle.”
I waited in silence.
“Have you seen your face since you’ve recovered?”
“Yes.”
“Did you note the changes?”
“With the extent of the damage done to my head, changes were to be expected.”
“Yes, I suppose they were.” She smiled at me benevolently. Miranda was a catalog of smiles, even more than Shelly Nolan had possessed. I had learned many of Miranda’s expressions while talking with her, and I had added them to my interpretati
ve databases regarding interpersonal relationships. “You look more like him than ever, you know.”
Shelly was suddenly at my side and I could almost detect the warmth of her hand resting on my shoulder. “Careful, partner. This one’s really intelligent. You always have to watch your step around those.”
During my time with Shelly, we had responded to several corp-related homicides. Those were always the most challenging. All of the people we dealt with had intelligence, experience, and wealth. The murderers among them proved to be canny quarry.
“Who do you think I look like?”
“Your neural donor.”
“Be very careful.” Shelly’s voice was soft and gentle, but I heard the steel in it.
“I was not aware that such records were kept.”
Miranda widened her eyes a little. “Oh, they’re kept. You just have to know where to look and be very sneaky about accessing them. I do, and I am. Very sneaky.”
I remained quiet.
“You don’t seem to have much to say.”
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you.”
“Do you know who your donor is?”
I resisted telling her the truth for a moment, but my interaction parameters demanded that I could not tell her a direct lie. “Yes.”
“What was his name?”
“Simon Blake.”
Curiosity gleamed in her dark eyes. “How do you know that?”
“Okay, Drake, you’ve got a loophole here. There are a lot of answers to that question.” Shelly squeezed my shoulder reassuringly. “Pick the safest.”
“I saw his face while I was researching the Mara Blake kidnapping.” That was true. I didn’t bother pointing out that Mara’s kidnapping had never been assigned to me. And, in truth, every open case was the responsibility of every NAPD officer. “I recognized it.”
“But how did you know Blake was a neural donor?”
“Simple logical progression. While at MirrorMorph, Mara Blake would have taken advantage of people she had around her to use as models. Those would have been the easiest to arrange legal matters with.”
“Was there anything else?”
“Simple dodge here, partner. You’re wearing the proof.”
Following Shelly’s instruction, I pointed to the face I wore. “Wouldn’t this be proof enough?”
Miranda took in a breath and let it out. “I suppose it is. Would you be surprised to know that I knew Mara Blake and her husband Simon?”
“Given the nature of your work developing neural mapping and channeling techniques, I would have assumed that was a given. If the matter had been a police investigation, I would have also verified that assumption.”
An investigator always verified. Shelly had taught me that. A police investigation was as redundant as a computer system, packed with backup features and oversight checkpoints.
“I would expect no less of you.” Miranda glanced at the computer screen beside her chair. From where I sat, I couldn’t see it. “I noticed an incongruity in your responses.”
Shelly cursed and crossed her arms over her chest.
I focused on Miranda. “Explain.”
“You have neural activity that I can’t understand.”
I waited.
Miranda regarded me in silence for a moment. “So? Would you care to tell me what was on your mind?”
“I’m accessing the Net as we speak. Clearing up some files at the NAPD and tracking developments on the event yesterday.”
Miranda shook her head. “No. That’s not the truth. Not all of the truth, at any rate. According to the readout I’m looking at, you’re engaged in a conversation. I want to know who you’re talking to.”
If I had been human, I could have hesitated or tried to lead the conversation astray. With the direction she’d given me, I couldn’t do that.
“I’m talking to Shelly Nolan.”
“Your dead partner?”
“Yes.”
If Miranda was surprised by that, she didn’t show it. However, her pulse elevated by twelve percent. She was a trained professional in a highly demanding corp that wouldn’t tolerate weakness. She had to be one of the best in her field.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Since shortly after Shelly died.”
“Ghosts are not real.”
“I know that.”
“Neither are voices from beyond the grave.”
“I know.”
“Then how do you explain hearing her?”
I thought about that, but in the end I knew I didn’t have an answer. “I have no idea. What is going on is…beyond my comprehension.”
“Have you told anyone about this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because no one can explain something that doesn’t exist.”
“Yet you hear her?”
“I do. More than that, I see her.”
“There’s also a visual manifestation?”
I nodded. “Have you ever heard of something like this happening?”
Slowly, Miranda shook her head. “Not to a bioroid. There are still reports in the media of seeing ghosts in different places that are supposed to be haunted. The stories, and the belief among humans, persist.”
“To what end?”
“I wouldn’t know why someone would want to believe in ghosts.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts, yet I see one in this room.”
To my right, Shelly stood glaring at Miranda. “I exist. She can’t just wish me out of existence.”
Miranda shifted in her seat, leaning back and taking a deep breath. “Do you miss your partner?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks, Drake.” Shelly smiled at me.
“Do you feel guilty for not being there when she was…when she died?”
“Yes.” That wasn’t unusual. Guilt, of a kind, was built into my persona. My needs were more sparse than a human’s, but they ran just as deeply. I needed to do a good job. I needed to do what the majority in society believed was the right thing to do. I needed to obey the law and the Three Directives.
“Have you heard of survivor’s guilt?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“A condition existing within a human psyche that is often triggered by a traumatic event where a person survives something that others didn’t, and that person thinks they personally should not have survived.” The condition was something I had seen in other police officers after a violent incident that had taken the lives of fellow officers.
Miranda nodded. “I believe you could be going through a form of that.”
“Impossible.” My response was immediate. “I am not human.”
“Your core personality is, and you’re closer to that than any bioroid I’ve ever dealt with.” Miranda tapped her fingernails on her chair arm. “It’s possible that you’ve pushed beyond just a simple neural mapping into far deeper and more complex waters.”
“I did not do this. I did not choose to see Shelly.”
“Thanks, partner.” Shelly shot me a look of reproach.
I felt uncomfortable sitting in that chair in that room, and I didn’t know if it was Miranda or Shelly that made me feel that way more.
“But you’re seeing and hearing her.”
“Yes.” I could not deny that to either of them.
Miranda was silent for a moment longer. “There is a reason for this, but I don’t know what that reason is today.” She directed her attention to her computer briefly. “I want to schedule a follow-up with you soon.”
“I don’t want this to interfere with my work.”
“Isn’t it already interfering with your work?”
“No. Shelly…helps me. She makes me think.”
“I still want to see you.”
“If you start calling me in out of rotation, won’t Haas-Bioroid want to know why?”
“Don’t worry about that. I can cover your meetings here. I�
��m given a lot of latitude in my present position. People I work with know that I often take special interests in projects. Given everything you’ve been through, someone should have already been calling you in to monitor your resiliency.”
I sat and wondered if that would be enough, feeling uncomfortable with how everything had developed. Instead of getting repaired and back to the NAPD, I now felt more hesitant that things would return to status quo.
Miranda lowered her voice and spoke more softly. “Don’t worry, Drake.”
“I do not worry.” I wasn’t programmed for that. I could be concerned over someone or a situation, but I could never be overly concerned over my own problems.
“Maybe you worry more than you think you do.”
I didn’t argue with her because I wanted to remain respectful.
“I’ll set up another appointment in a few days.” Miranda gazed at me. “In the meantime, you’re cleared for duty. I’ll write out your releases. They’ll be on your captain’s PAD by the time you arrive.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ll find an answer for you, Drake. I promise.”
I didn’t need an answer. I didn’t wonder too much about why I saw Shelly. I took comfort from the fact that she was, in whatever capacity, still there for me. I didn’t want to lose her again.
I thanked Miranda and took my leave. She stared after me the whole time, perhaps forgetting that I had 360-degree vision.
Shelly walked beside me but didn’t say a word.
Chapter Eleven
We’ve been frozen out of the investigation, Drake.” Royo sat at his desk next to mine in the bullpen. He glared at me sourly and I knew he blamed me for our posting. He believed that I—by my nature—had been the cause of his assignation to what he considered unimportant cases.
To me, there were no unimportant cases. All of the work needed to be done. Royo was a young detective still needing to prove himself. He craved the high-profile cases for all the publicity they brought with them.