by Mel Odom
The term struck me as incongruous. I was programmed to serve the law. I was not supposed to be the malefactor.
Yet I stood at the inflexible bars of my cell and stared out into the narrow hallway that ran through the holding area. I had been in such holding areas before, but I had never been on this side of the bars.
Trapped.
The terms would not stop filtering through my thoughts. I was not programmed for anxiety. That emotion was elusive and undesirable, especially for a bioroid. Even if Haas-Bioroid had found a means to replicate it, they would have chosen not to.
But I did feel uncomfortable. That was an attainable state, and it was one that the programming used to enable bioroids to better fit into the human populace.
I felt uncomfortable on this side of the bars and trapped within the holding cell because I was not supposed to be there. And I felt uncomfortable standing there naked. Clothing was important to a bioroid. Clothing helped the mechanical body better blend in among humans. We were never mistaken as human, but higher functioning bioroids were programmed to blunt our differences. Synthskin only covered the face and hands, sometimes up to the elbows.
Only the shadows blunted my differences now. In the darkness, I could be mistaken for the other wretched prisoners sleeping in their bunks. I was one of them. The sour stench of sweat and fear and bile washed over me, and snores and moans and snatches of men talking in their sleep reached my aud receptors.
Even though I already knew the tensile strength and specifications of the bars and electromag locks that kept me within the cell, I put my hands on the bars and pulled, testing them. They remained immobile.
I stood, waiting. I could just as easily have sat.
I accessed my internal PAD and found it had been squelched. I could not lock into the building’s broadcast array to contact the media. My on-board chronometer told me it was 1537, but the darkness indicated that assessment was incorrect. On-board chronometers depended on linking with PADs at regular intervals to maintain correct time.
I did not know how long I had been offline.
I stood in the darkness and waited. I knew I was in trouble. It only remained to be seen whether Haas-Bioroid or the police came for me first. I wondered if Chyou had gotten away. I hoped that she had.
“You’re in over your head, Drake.”
Hearing Shelly’s voice, I turned around and saw her sitting on the bunk I’d vacated. She looked pensive and anxious.
“Things appear bleak at the moment.”
“Bleak?” Shelly shook her head and gazed around at the holding cell. “No, this is way past bleak.”
I saw no reason to dispute her conclusion. “Perhaps a satisfactory arrangement can still be made.”
“With the way you went behind the brass’s back?” Shelly snorted. “Not likely.”
“They did not accept that the weapons existed. Something had to be done. The weapons did exist. I’m betting more still do. What we found can’t have been all that were made. The illegal manufacturing plant churned them out. They’re out there somewhere and they need to be found.”
“Do you have any proof of those weapons?”
“Of course I do. I saw them. If I saw them, it was recorded.”
“Really? Tell me what they were.”
I reached into my memories and tried to summon up images of the weapons. I couldn’t. Only blank canvas existed there after Chyou and I opened the warehouse doors. I felt uncomfortable again.
“Someone has tampered with my memories.”
“Of course they did. Otherwise you’d never have been locked up in here and someone would be out there searching for those weapons.”
Shelly was right. When the police department had taken me into custody, technicians would have downloaded my on-board memories: images, aud files, any vid I had streamed during an investigation. I couldn’t do that now, which meant that they hadn’t been able to either. All reference to the weapons had been wiped.
“Who did this?”
Shelly shook her head. “I don’t know. You didn’t even know your memories had been wiped until I pointed it out.”
I considered that, and I thought again how Miranda believed that Shelly was some part of my own logic and memories that I had locked away so that she—and the training she gave me—would not be lost. If Shelly had not somehow existed outside my own consciousness, perhaps I would never have even known about the weapons now.
“What should I do?”
There was no answer, and when I looked at the bunk again, Shelly was gone.
* * *
Three hours and twenty-eight minutes passed. I knew that was true because I stayed functional during that time. No one came through the holding area, but I knew seccams kept watch. Whoever manned security in the cells knew that I was functional.
I was intentionally being left alone.
So I stood and I tried to find other holes in my memories. Logic dictated that exercise was futile. If I couldn’t remember something, I was hardly likely to remember not remembering it. Still, I searched for gaps, skipping through time/date stamps in my memory. Other than the weapons discovery, I found nothing.
Finally, a door at the end of the hallway to my left hissed and slid open. An austere man in a good suit came through the door, followed by a woman who was also well-dressed.
The man had a large face, long and hollow, and crow’s feet around his eyes that he had undoubtedly decided to leave in place because the rest of his face had been touched up under a laser. His blond hair was pulled back and gelled, just long enough to manage the style. His hands were large, long-fingered, and had scars across the knuckles. Thin lips rendered his mouth as a slash above his jutting chin. He stood taller than me and carried himself with the arrogance of a man used to intimidating others through size alone.
The woman only came to the man’s shoulder, but she had sharp, watchful eyes in a round, guileless face. Her dark brunette hair hung to her shoulders. Her lipstick was dark red and stood out against her dark complexion. She had a lot of American Indian blood and it showed in her chiseled nose and cheekbones.
With a practiced flourish, the man waved his hand in front of the e-reader built into the holding cell. Immediately, a vid scrolled into the air and displayed the man’s credentials from the e-ID implanted under his skin.
Cavanaugh, Eustice Peter. Captain. New Angeles Police Department. Internal Affairs Division. The image in the vid matched the face of the man in front of me.
I waited, but I immediately adjusted my on-board chronometer with the time/date stamp on the PAD upload. I had been off the correct time by seven minutes. That time increment wouldn’t have been much to a human, but it was unacceptable to me. I stared at the two and waited, knowing nothing good was going to come of this meeting.
IA was the most feared arm in the NAPD. They broke careers and sent corrupt police officers to jail. Sending me to jail wasn’t on the table, but I could be sent back to Haas-Bioroid and repurposed.
“Drake 3GI2RC.” His voice was flat and hollow, with less humanity than the lowest service bioroid.
I didn’t say anything. I hadn’t been asked a question. During our work together, Shelly had only talked to IA once. She hadn’t been happy about the experience.
“Do you acknowledge that you are Drake 3GI2RC?”
“Yes.” The question was redundant. In a jail filled with humans and clones, I could be no one else. Bioroids were not arrested. They were detained, powered down, had their files downloaded—if necessary—and sent back to Haas-Bioroid.
“What can you tell me about Rosmanskas Warehouse Number 47?” Cavanaugh held his PAD up to the e-reader and a vid of the structure took life inside my cell.
Not much of the warehouse remained. Skeletal architecture jutted up from debris and scorched siding plates. The fire that had been set inside the building had been allowed to burn a long time. Either the safety measures had been defective or someone had taken them offline. When buildings caught on
fire on the Moon and they sat on the Moon’s surface, fires usually got suppressed by evacuating the air.
“The question parameters are too broad.” I ignored the vid of the warehouse. If I had wanted to, I could have constructed it. “Please present more focused questions.”
“Did you destroy this warehouse?”
“No.”
The woman waved her hand in front of the e-reader. SMALLHAWK, REBA. LIEUTENANT. NEW ANGELES POLICE DEPARTMENT. INTERNAL AFFAIRS DIVISION.
She asked the next question. “Were you in any way responsible for the warehouse’s destruction?”
“Possibly. I would have to examine pertinent data associated with the fire.”
Cavanaugh cursed. “I hate these things. They never give you a straight answer.”
“I am trying to, Captain Cavanaugh. I am answering your questions to the best of my ability.”
Smallhawk didn’t look perturbed. “How might you have been responsible for the destruction of this warehouse?”
“I was in pursuit of illegal weapons. While there, I became involved in a firefight. It is possible that during that altercation I might have caused the fire. However, I think it is more likely that the black marketers I was pursuing set the fire to destroy any evidence of their crimes. Did you find any evidence of illegal weapons there?”
Cavanaugh’s voice grew louder and became more strident. I recognized the vocal changes as anger and frustration. “No questions, Drake. We’re the ones with questions.”
“Of course.”
Smallhawk took over the questioning again. “What illegal weapons were you pursuing?”
“Skorpios Defense Systems has been hiding shipments of weapons they have manufactured and are selling on Mars. I became aware of this activity and intended to stop them. I trust Skorpios is being investigated.” The last was not exactly a question.
“No. Stay on topic, Drake.” Cavanaugh crossed his arms over his chest.
“Yes, sir. But there is much about my investigation and the events leading up to that warehouse fire that you do not know.”
“Why don’t we know?”
“Because you have not been told. I would be happy to update you on the progress of that investigation.”
Cavanaugh held up a hand. “Stop. I’m not going to listen to any crap about whatever investigation you think you were running. I’m here—we’re here—to proceed with our own investigation.”
“I think an investigation into Skorpios Defense Systems would be helpful with your investigation.”
Red-faced, pulse increasing in the hollow of his throat, Cavanaugh stepped in closer to the bars, over the yellow line in front of the cell. “Do you want to be scrapped?”
Obviously he still trusted my software and that I would offer him no harm.
“I do not wish to be repurposed.”
“Not repurposed. I said scrapped. I mean scrapped. The NAPD owns you, and I’m a big factor in what happens to you from this point on. You need to accept that.”
“I do.” I could tell that he didn’t like my calm attitude, but I wasn’t capable of fear, and I deduced that emotion was what he wanted from me. IA terrified a lot of policemen, even those that were as honest as Shelly Nolan had been. “I do not know what you want me to do to reflect that.”
“You’re being held accountable for the destruction of that warehouse and property damage that is still being tabulated. And if you’re being held accountable, that means the NAPD is being held accountable.”
“The NAPD cannot be held accountable for the destruction of those black market weapons. All of them should be destroyed.”
Cavanaugh leaned in even closer. “There. Were. No. Weapons.”
“No disrespect, sir, but there were weapons in that warehouse.”
Taking a deep breath, Cavanaugh turned to his partner. “Tell me he’s lying.”
Eyes focused on me, Smallhawk shook her head. “No. He can’t lie.”
Cavanaugh turned back to me. “What were you doing at that warehouse?”
“Searching for illegal weapons.”
“That Skorpios was shipping illegally?”
“Yes.”
“And you found weapons there?”
“Yes.”
“Then where are they now, Drake?”
“I don’t know. The black marketers blew up the ship they were on. I was flying away with their cargo vessel when I was shot down.”
“Show me your vid of those events.”
“I can’t.”
Cavanaugh let out a deep breath. “You can’t?”
“No, sir.”
“Why?”
“Because my memories of those events have been wiped.”
“If your memories have been wiped, then how can you even remember anything about that warehouse or those weapons?”
“As a bioroid constructed for police investigation, my neural interface allows for two datastreams. One is for auditory and visual download. The other is part of my kernel core. My…self…to use a vernacular.”
“Your self?” Cavanaugh spoke explosively. “You have no self, Drake. You’re not a person. You’re not even an animal. You’re a tool. Just an over-augmented tool.”
The rhetoric sounded a lot like Human First ideology. I didn’t comment.
Cavanaugh turned away from me and looked at Smallhawk. “You do this. I can’t talk to this thing. All it does is go in circles.”
Smallhawk focused on me. “Did you wipe your own memories, Drake?”
That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. For a split-second I was curious about the chance of me doing that. But I knew the answer. “No.”
“Would you remember it if you did?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because that information would be contained in my kernel memories.” I gave that consideration. “The only way those memories could have been wiped was during the time I was offline. I don’t know how long I was offline. But if you knew that, you would have a window of opportunity.”
“You were offline for three days, four hours, and twenty-three minutes.”
I was used to doing something every second of every day. I didn’t sleep in the way that humans did. When I was physically powered down in my apartment, I was organizing case files and chasing down leads on the Net. Shelly had sometimes joked that I did my best work when I was “sleeping.”
“That is a lot of time.”
“It is.” Smallhawk continued studying me.
“You could review the files of my recovery and incarceration.”
Smallhawk waved her PAD in front of the e-reader. Immediately the vid displayed images from a media feed data stamped three days, four hours, and twenty-five minutes ago.
I studied the images and watched as recovery robots that looked like gleaming silver crabs crawled over the wrecked cargo ship. The recovery robots were operated through telepresence, by operators at control centers inside stations under the lunar surface. As the robots tore through the ship’s outer skin, debris floated lazily through the microgravity. Forensic robots working on the outer edge of the crash site collected the pieces. The primary focus had been on saving lives.
“No one was found with you in that ship, Drake.” Smallhawk blanked the vid and took her PAD down.
“No one was with me in the ship.”
“But someone was with you.”
I didn’t say anything. She hadn’t asked a question.
Her tone grew sharper. “When the cargo ship was recovered, the emergency escape pod was missing.”
I still didn’t say anything about Chyou.
“Was someone with you on that ship?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“A woman named Chyou Xiang.”
Smallhawk held up her PAD again, and this time Chyou’s image and information showed up on vid. “Is this the woman that was with you?”
“Yes?”
“Where is she now?”
“I d
on’t know.”
“Was Chyou with you in that warehouse?”
That question gave me pause as my programming tried to sort out the ramifications. I wasn’t supposed to lie to anyone in authority. I was not supposed to compromise an investigation.
However, my primary directive was to protect humans at all costs. Giving up too much information about Chyou could endanger her. The black marketers we had tracked down could be looking for her. I had no way of knowing if Chyou had been identified during the raid on the warehouse. If I gave up her identity to the IA team and one of those black marketers got their hands on the information, I would be the one that had endangered her.
Remaining silent on the matter would not have helped. My silence would have confirmed Chyou’s presence just as readily.
However, by supplying Chyou’s name to Smallhawk and her partner, I had already potentially put Chyou in harm’s way. I didn’t know if humans worried about such complexities. I thought Shelly had, but I had always found her to be the exception to the rule for human standards.
I had no choice other than to lie. “Chyou was not at the warehouse with me.”
Cavanaugh whirled around and glared angrily at Smallhawk. “I thought you said these things couldn’t lie.”
Smallhawk tilted her head to one side as she regarded me. “First and foremost, bioroids have to protect humans. There’s no dodging that one.”
Cavanaugh returned to the cell and held his PAD up to the reader. “Forget that warehouse nonsense. I want to know why you killed Jonas Salter.”
The vid juiced to life again, and this time the display showed Salter sprawled in a utility closet off one of the mag-lev tubes underground. Someone had slashed his throat.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I studied the vid, capturing the image to my internal storage.
Jonas Salter was dressed in the same clothes that I’d last seen him in. Whoever had killed him hadn’t been gentle. Magnifying the image, I estimated that the murderer had slashed Jonas’s throat three times: right to left, left to right, and a final right to left.
The cuts suggested a right-handed person with a large blade, not a small one. The fact that I could see the whiteness of Salter’s spine also told me the attacker had been very powerful.