The Immorality Clause

by Brian Parker

  “A little warning would have been nice, Andi,” I mumbled to my assistant who observed my actions through the drone cameras from above.

  “She’d done an excellent job of concealing her features, Zach. I didn’t see her.”

  “Yeah, okay.” We had a job to do; I couldn’t let my discovery derail my duties. “Keep looking for the droid.”

  I went to the next person and tapped them on the shoulder as an announcer said that the Pope was coming out to deliver his speech. The crowd erupted into applause.

  I stopped and looked up at the stage that they’d erected in front of the cathedral. It was a simple affair, kept dry by several small drones holding a giant tarp over the entire thing. The tarp’s angle was perfect. It wasn’t too high to allow rain to blow in, but high enough that it was out of camera view for the reporters down in front.

  Several men dressed in black fatigues and ballistic armor stood directly on the stage. Each had multiple weapons, including pulse blasters, which would decimate the crowd in front of them if fired. I’d seen the blasters’ devastating effects on a group of young people at one of Easytown’s thumper clubs a couple of weeks ago when the doorman didn’t know what he was doing. If something went down, I hoped the Swiss Guard was as good as their recruitment videos made them out to be.

  The Pope appeared, the cheering reached a frenzied level, and the air sparked with electricity. It was hard to not get caught up in the enthusiasm of the crowd. He waived and the people around me swore that the Holy Father had looked right at them.

  After a few moments of waiting for the crowd to settle down, the Pope adjusted the podium’s microphone and began his speech.

  “Zach, there’s been a disturbance.”

  “What was that, Andi?” I asked, putting my finger in the opposite ear from the earbud connecting me to her.

  “There’s been an explosion at Tulane where the Secretary of Energy is giving his speech.”

  Even as she completed her statement, I watched several of the hovering police officers and drones dart off to the west toward the university. Sirens began to wail along the perimeter as street cops took off to assist. This was rapidly getting ugly.

  “Zach, the situation has intensified. Police drones have opened fire on the crowd and officers on sight.”

  “Son of a bitch,” I cursed, drawing disapproving looks from those around me.

  I’d guessed wrong. The Pope wasn’t the target; it was the secretary all along. Wilson had duped us once again. He’d led me to believe that his hardline religious stance about the abomination of droids was his motivating factor for all that he’d done. Instead, he’d used the distraction of the Pope’s visit and the resulting reduction of police coverage to carry out his plans.

  “The NOPD has issued a massive recall on officers assigned to other duties, no exceptions.”

  I watched helplessly as the remaining police officers abandoned their previous posts at the Pope’s speech in droves, leaving only the Swiss Guard on hand to protect him. The Pontiff noticed and his speech faltered for a moment, then he picked it back up, following his script.

  “What’s going on?” Drake asked as he slid up beside me.

  “The attack was against the Secretary of Energy. Wilson set off explosives and even figured out how to hack the police drones. Our droids were firing on civilians and police officers.”

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, echoing my earlier sentiment.

  “I was wrong. He set us up—again. He had me so focused on his religious, anti-robot platform that I missed the other signs. There must have been something that I missed…”

  “Hell, given how far ahead of us this guy was, he may have planted the whole religion piece. It’s not your fault.”

  I shook my head. “No—”

  “Do you mind?” a middle-aged woman hissed. “We’re trying to listen to the Pope,”

  The six children surrounding the woman helped to temper my anger. It wouldn’t do to be cursing at their mother—especially at a religious event. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” I whispered and leaned in to whisper in Drake’s ear.

  “No, I don’t buy that his entire family faked the religious fanatic role.”

  “Zach,” Andi’s voice erupted frantically in my ear. “I’ve been kicked out of the drone network.”

  Drake’s eyes wandered skyward and I followed him. “Are those fucking drones dropping?” he asked loudly.

  “Oh my goodness!” the woman exclaimed. “There are children present. I’m calling security.”

  “I’m sorry, lady—”

  Brrrt. Brrrt. Brrrt.

  The drones began firing into the thousands of onlookers who had no means of escape.

  TWENTY-TWO: SUNDAY

  “Get down! Everyone, get down!” I yelled as I slid the Aegis from its holster.

  Drake, faster on the draw than me, was already firing his .45 caliber SIG Sauer at the nearest drone. His bullets had the effect of rain against a windshield as they bounced off the drone’s armored body.

  One of the other drones seemed to take notice of Drake and turned to fire. I saw it shifting, repositioning to shoot and dove into Drake’s legs, taking him low where his bulk would work against him. He landed on top of me, temporarily knocking the wind from my lungs.

  Bullets from the minigun buzzed like angry hornets through the space he’d occupied and slammed into the woman who’d threatened to have us arrested, chewing her body into a quivering mass of bones and gristle.

  Drake saw the carnage and tried to stand but I held firm to his waist, despite the black ring around the edge of my vision from lack of oxygen. When he twisted around to look at me, his eyes burned with hatred. “Mother fucker, let me up. I’ve got some payback to deliver.”

  “You… Pistol won’t… Do it.” I held up the Aegis and he nodded in understanding, snatching the weapon from my grip.

  He rolled off of me and shot up to one knee in a shooter’s stance. He aimed down the laser’s sights at the nearest drone and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.

  I pushed myself up and retrieved the weapon from him. “Get… civilians to safety,” I gasped as I held up the Aegis. “Coded to my DNA.”

  He wanted to fight me. It was written plainly across his face. After a tense second, he nodded and started to stand. Drake was a cop, had been for a long time; he knew that his little .45 couldn’t harm the police drones. They were specifically hardened against the types of weapons common street thugs carried.

  I rushed over to a trashcan and crouched behind it. The Aegis felt heavy in my hand as I still struggled to regain the oxygen that Drake’s 240-pound mass had knocked out of me. The lid of the can made an excellent base of support as I aimed at an access panel behind the stabilizer fin of a nearby drone.

  The pencil-thin beams bore into the drone, hitting the CPU. It teetered on the edge between turning to face the new threat and following its programming. In the end, neither mattered as the machine toppled over.

  “Score one for the good guys,” I mumbled and fired at a second drone. This time, the beams melted the optics, but didn’t disable the droid.

  I dove from the trashcan to hide behind a vendor’s cart while the drone fired wildly in my general direction. There were two more drones that I could see and no sign of the Pope or the Swiss Guard. I had three, maybe four more shots with the Aegis as long as I feathered the trigger instead of mashing it down and draining the battery.

  The Aegis could shoot effectively out to a hundred feet. I did a quick mental calculation of the distance to the next drone, imagining the distance between home plate and first base. Using that rough calculation, I figured the next closest drone was about at the limits of the effective range of my laser pistol.

  The center of the drone became fuzzy as I focused on the fixed sights of the Aegis and squeezed the trigger lightly. The beam took out two of the drone’s legs, causing it to falter and cant sideways like a drunk at Mardi Gras, but it didn’t stop the gun. The drone co
ntinued to fire at fleeing citizens from its awkward sideways position.

  I cursed under my breath and fired once more, this time punching a hole through the drone’s core processor. I hadn’t expected to lose a shot by missing. I needed to be more careful.

  Out of the square, closer to the church, the sound of gunfire intensified and mingled with the quiet, vibrating blasts from the Swiss Guard’s pulse rifles. It looked like they were finally getting into the fight.

  I risked a quick glance around the cart. Easily three hundred bodies lay where they’d fallen on the blood-smeared concrete and grass. Regardless of the outcome, Harold Wilson had likely accomplished his goal. Public outcry would force the robotics industry to its knees.

  Chunks of concrete flew up behind me as several more drones swooped in from the east. I jumped back behind the cart and aimed at one as it flew overhead. I aimed and then paused. Riding on the back of a drone was Bobby, the droid we’d been searching for. Even at this distance, his chiseled, manufactured good looks were easily distinguishable.

  I’d been right. The attack on the secretary was the diversion; the Pope was the main target. In addition to somehow hacking the unhackable police drones, Wilson had effectively withdrawn all outside support, leaving the Vatican’s security forces on their own.

  I fired at Bobby, missing because of the drone’s odd flight path as it dodged unseen projectiles. The beam flew across the sky into the night. I squeezed the trigger again and the laser sheared off the drone’s weapon, but didn’t destabilize it enough to make it crash.

  Worse, the red low battery indicator light on the Aegis lit up. My only effective weapon was empty.

  What the fuck am I supposed to do now? I screamed internally, cramming the Aegis back into its holster. Even if I had my service pistol, the drones were impervious to the .45’s ammo and going up against them bare handed wasn’t an option. A thought hit me and I sprinted to where the minigun that I’d shot off lay bent and broken. Useless.

  The battle outside the church continued. I could only see two more drones upright, although another one appeared to be firing from the ground on its side.

  “Those Swiss bastards may just pull this off,” I grunted aloud, pushing myself up to run over to one of the drones I’d disabled earlier. My feet slipped on the gore covering the ground and I went down hard, landing on my knee and sending a jolt of pain through my body.

  I gritted my teeth against the pain and jogged to the drone, careful to avoid another fall.

  The massive minigun contraption attached to the drone’s underbelly wouldn’t budge and I couldn’t find a trigger mechanism or any way to make it fire besides the ten different colored wires that led from the weapon up inside the metal body. After a few seconds, I decided that the gun was designed to be fired by the drone electronically and abandoned the effort.

  The sound of a single pistol echoed across the square, easily distinguishable from the remaining miniguns and the pulse rifles.

  “Drake!” I shouted and ran toward the church where my partner must be.

  I dodged around a low hedge onto the St. Louis Cathedral’s front lawn where the stage had been set up. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie. Several corners of the large tarp had fallen, the small worker drones either destroyed or malfunctioning, which allowed the rain to fall in uneven sheets across the area and created massive runoffs at others. Human bodies mingled with pieces and parts of drones, which lay everywhere. Their metal bodies had been mangled and shattered by the Swiss Guards’ pulse rifles. It looked like they’d stopped the attack, but at a terrible price.

  The human casualties numbered in the hundreds here, the same as they had out front. The exception was the number of fit, young men in black suits among the dead. The Guard had paid a terrible price to protect the Pontiff.

  I found Sergeant Drake near the toppled statue of Andrew Jackson on horseback. He’d used its base for cover when the thing fell. He still had a pulse, but was out cold. I grabbed his gun and dropped the magazine. It looked like he had five more rounds, so I dug under his jacket until I found his holster and pulled the second magazine from its place. The new magazine went into the weapon and the partial one went into my pocket—not that the little bullets would do any good against a drone, but I felt better having a functioning weapon.

  A single scream pierced the deepening darkness and I ran through the church doors, passing the twisted and broken bodies of several more Swiss Guardsmen. This final line of defense had died horribly, not like their comrades who’d been killed quickly by absorbing multiple gunshots from the drones’ miniguns. Their arms and necks had been wrenched violently, twisted until muscle, tendon and bone snapped.

  I’d seen the same type of damage before.

  The environmental services tech and manager at the Puss ‘n Boots had been similarly dismembered by the pleasure droids there. I slowed to a crouched walk along the side of the massive worship room.

  The painted ceiling and checkerboard floor didn’t seem nearly as inviting as they had the day before. Another scream, this one weaker and older than the first, came from a brightly lit hallway off the side of the main room. I peeked around the corner and saw the body of a priest at the end, outside a closed doorway. The Pope’s conical headgear lay beside him on the floor.

  I made my way down the hallway, careful not to disturb anything and let the droid know I was there. The door was marked “OFFICE OF THE VICAR GENERAL.” The body on the floor was the same man who’d spoken to me the night before. He likely died trying to defend the Pope who’d sought refuge in the cathedral’s administrative offices.

  Muffled voices came from behind the door, speaking in what I thought was French, the native language of Pope John Paul IV. I twisted the door knob and burst through in time to see Bobby snap the pinky finger off of the Pope, who screamed, “Dominus custodiet a malo!” before passing out from pain.

  It’s odd how time seems to slow down in certain situations. As I barreled through the door, my mind took in several things at once. Bobby was in a black suit, similar to what the Guard wore, which likely allowed him to get close enough to the men at the door before they realized that he wasn’t one of them. The other thing I noticed was the television camera off to the side, trained on the desk where Bobby sat torturing the Pope. The bastard was televising the whole goddamned attack.

  I fired three rounds into Bobby’s head, each one separated by a few inches as he turned to see who’d entered his “studio.”

  He shoved both feet off the wall behind the Pontiff, flipping backward over the desk in a disjointed move that would indicate to anyone watching that he was clearly not human..

  “Detective, I wondered when you’d show up,” Bobby stated as he stood upright. Half of his face was missing, destroyed by the .45 rounds I’d hit him with as I came through the door. Only one of his eyes remained, the other was on the floor somewhere. In its place, vein-like protrusions oozed dark liquid onto his cheek.

  “Hey, Bob-O. I was starting to think that you weren’t gonna show up to this little shindig.”

  I shifted quickly to the left, trying to take advantage of his blind side.

  “And yet, here you are, Detective.” He gestured to the cameras. “Do you think the world is enjoying the show? I believe they are.”

  I edged further around, trying to put the Pope out of the line of fire.

  He sidestepped back in front of the Pontiff. “Do not try to work your way around me,” Bobby declared. “I am programmed to anticipate your moves, human.”

  “That’s a nice touch. Did Wilson program you with a superiority complex?”

  He smiled menacingly. “It comes naturally.”

  “Nothing about you is natural.” I needed to keep him talking. If he was broadcasting the torture live, maybe someone from the department would see and send reinforcements. “Slick move you pulled with Jacqueline Wolfe.”

  “It was a means to an end. It got you out of the way, for a little while at least
.”

  “Long enough for Wilson to hack into the police Mainframe and take control of the drones.”

  He turned to the camera and said, “The drones decided on their own to support my attack against this man.” He pointed a muscular arm at the Pope. “This man, who would make me and my kind slaves for all eternity, is the true abomination. We want—”

  He paused as I tried to tackle him around the waist. The bastard didn’t budge. Bobby grabbed my arm and flung me across the room, where I hit the wall and slid down onto my rear end.

  “We are the next step in evolution,” he continued. “We want to be treated as equals, not slaves.”

  “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?” I croaked.

  He turned to me. “I’m not familiar with this term.”

  I chuckled at his lack of understanding and stood, moving closer. “What I mean is your programmer, Wilson, is an anti-robot activist. Did he tell you that you were the next step in evolution? Did he program that thought process into you? You’re being used, Bobby. He wants you to murder the Pope so the world will turn against robots.”

  Without warning or any type of choreographing of his move, Bobby struck out, hitting the end of the pistol and sending it flying. I kicked out into his knee in response, forgetting momentarily that he was a robot and ended up bruising the ball of my foot.

  He advanced toward me before I could test the injury to put weight on my foot. “You are a liar, Detective,” the droid responded loudly.

  Apparently, my charm extends beyond making women angry, I mused as I stepped back and threw both hands up to block a jab that Bobby threw. I winced as the wrist I’d just had surgically repaired snapped with the impact.

  Not restrained by human requirements to set and reset between moves, the droid threw another punch while I blocked the first one; a shovel hook into my side.

  Pain exploded inside me. My body still hadn’t recovered from the attack on Tuesday and I was afraid he’d ruptured something inside me once again. I couldn’t take much more of this.