Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

by Judd Trichter

  “Keep the engine running,” says Eliot.

  “Good luck.”

  Eliot conceals the Glock off his right hip. He gets out of the car and follows the fighter toward the station. He stays thirty yards behind and keeps the lid down on his fedora, the collar up on his coat. A mist descends from the clouded sky. There’s a shine to the evening and a splash every time one of Eliot’s shoes strikes the pavement. Everything a little slippery tonight, everything a little slick.

  Eliot follows the fighter up the staircase toward the station. He passes some event staff who must have stayed late. There’s a panhandler organizing the contents of his cart. Three layers of clothing protect him from that cold only schizophrenics feel. At the top of the stairs, Eliot feeds three ingots into the turnstile. The Russian walks alongside the edge of the platform. Eliot follows. He connects to his brother again through the earpiece.

  “Southbound platform.”

  “Copy that,” says Shelley.

  A voice calls out from the benches down the way.

  “Papa, Papa!” A brown-haired girl, no more than ten years old, releases a woman’s hand and charges toward the fighter.

  “Ha, ha!” Slugger catches her as the girl leaps into his arms. “My angel! My little angel!” The girl wraps her arms around him as they press their faces together. “My dearest angel,” says the fighter. “My lovely, lovely angel.”

  Eliot stands along the platform pretending not to watch. He was hoping to get the Russian alone, sneak up behind him, take his shot as the train pulled in. No witnesses or collateral damage. No little girl figured into the plan.

  The woman approaches Slugger. It appears she’s a babysitter, a bot, no doubt—Eliot can tell by the cheap synthetic hair. Slugger pays her out of the money from Blumenthal and speaks to her in Russian. She kisses the girl good night. She heads for the exit and Eliot notices the faint layer of drool thickening around her mouth. She’s a foamer, probably a week from psychosis unless she gets some antivirus soon.

  “And look what I find for you,” says Slugger. He hands over the shopping bag, and the girl pulls a box from inside. She tears away the wrapping paper and screams in excitement.

  “Papa, Papa!” She squeals and hugs the box to her chest. “Thank you, thank you! I love you, Papa!”

  Eliot peers over the edge of the platform and sees a small circle of light expanding through the fog. He steps away and looks back at the girl. The fighter’s face reddens as she showers him with kisses. She opens the box to reveal a Chug-Bot yawning out of its package. The rapture spreads across her face at the first sight of the toy.

  “You promise behave, I promise Chug-Bot,” says the Russian. “We each keep promise, no?”

  What do I do about the girl? Eliot wonders. How do I kill the man she calls Papa right in front of her?

  Eliot walks to a newsbrane dispenser and buys the late edition. The cover shows a loop of a ritual beheading, the same one he attended the previous night. A quick look shows Eliot’s face is covered with a hood. He assumes the moment where he’s revealed is edited out, but that doesn’t mean the police don’t know he was there.

  The incoming train forces the heavy air through the station. Slugger puts a hand on the girl’s head and strokes her hair with a touch so gentle it defies belief this same hand murdered eight bots an hour ago.

  That’s right, murdered, Eliot reminds himself as the train slows to a stop. He didn’t care about the loved ones of the eight bots he killed in the pit. He didn’t care about the villages he wiped out in Dagestan. How many orphans has Slugger Davydenko created in his life? How many will he create in the future? There’s an arithmetic in which Eliot can see that creating one orphan tonight is tantamount to saving a hundred others.

  Through the earpiece, he speaks to his brother. “Southbound local.”

  “You’re gettin’ on?”

  “Follow the train.”

  Slugger sits with the girl in a middle car. A few passengers inside. Eliot sits across. He sees the Chug-Bot nuzzle into the girl’s arms.

  “Stand clear of the closing doors,” says the conductor over the intercom. The warning beeps, ding-dong, before the doors close. The train starts. Eliot holds his newsbrane high to cover his face, the lid of his fedora low.

  “You can’t name him Mikhail,” says the Russian. “Mikhail is weak name. Weak name for a weak man.”

  “But he’s not a man,” says the girl. “He’s just a little Chug-Bot.”

  “Chug-Bot or no. No Mikhail in my home.”

  Eliot looks to the other passengers absorbed in their own tiny circumferences of awareness. Watching their branes, talking in an earpiece, drifting off to sleep. Too busy, too frightened, especially with the beheading in the news and other anxieties in the city. None of them would interfere, except that there’s a child involved— an android child, Eliot assumes, but a child nonetheless.

  “Then I will name him Boris,” says the girl.

  “Boris?” The Russian scoffs behind his mirrored glasses. “Boris is worse than Mikhail. A name for drunk, Boris. A name for drunk fool.”

  He’d take his shot another night, if he had another night, if he wasn’t out of time. But this is the night, thinks Eliot. This is my last and only chance.

  “What should I name him?” asks the girl.

  “Why you ask me? Is your Chug-Bot. For you to name, not me.”

  “What about Vladimir?”

  Eliot feels the new gun at his waist, metal against skin, reminding him of the night on Pink’s ledge.

  “Horrible. Vladimir is worst yet. Awful, awful name.”

  “Why is Vladimir awful? What’s wrong with Vladimir?”

  “Is name for thief,” says the Russian. “For criminal. A name with no conscience. A greedy, evil name.”

  The train rambles into the Boyle Heights station. Passengers empty from the car. All except Eliot, Slugger, and the girl. They’re all alone now.

  “But why Papa? Why is Vladimir evil?”

  “Why, why, why?” asks the Russian. “Why is any man evil?”

  The conductor speaks over the intercom. “Next stop is Heron. Stand clear of the closing doors.”

  The Chug-Bot yelps and coos. The girl rubs her nose against its face. The doors close and the train starts.

  “Were the men you killed in pit tonight evil?” asks the girl.

  A homeless bot pushes his cart through the end door. Eliot recognizes him as the panhandler from the station. He looks into his cart and mutters to voices only he can hear.

  “Who say I kill men in pit?” says Slugger. “I am baker. I bake breads for heartbeats.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Behind the newsbrane, Eliot puts his hand against his hip as if he has an itch.

  “Maybe the men evil, maybe not.” Slugger shrugs. “Who can tell with men?”

  He releases the safety on the Glock.

  “Then why kill them, Papa? Why?”

  Get close, says the gun. Two in the chest where his engine spins.

  “Why kill them?” The fighter repeats the girl’s question. “Because they try to kill me. Why!”

  Eliot looks at the girl.

  “But why, Papa? Why they try to kill you?”

  He looks at the young girl’s eyes.

  “Because I have what they want is why.”

  There’s a discoloration in her eye.

  “Then why not give what they want, Papa?”

  A red fleck in her eye.

  “Because the thing they want is to kill me.”

  She has Iris’s eyes.

  “But why, Papa? Why?”

  The girl has Iris’s eyes.

  “Because this is how it is—why! Everybody has something somebody want, somebody kill to take. This is why world evil. This is why men evil. Everybody greedy. Everybody have need.”

  His hand shakes. The pain stabs in his shoulder.

  “I’m not going to let anybody take my Chug-Bot!”

  She’s not
your sister, says the gun.

  “Then name him Vladimir. Nobody will want.”

  She’s just a bot.

  “Maybe I’ll name him Fyodor then.”

  A toaster with a soul.

  “Fyodor.” The Russian nods. “Not bad, Fyodor.”

  He aims the gun behind the newsbrane.

  “This is my little Fyodor,” says the girl. “I will name him Fyodor. I will love him and cherish him and protect him from anyone who tries to take.”

  What are you waiting for?

  “Papa?” asks the girl.

  Don’t be Orpheus.

  “Papa, what is it?”

  Don’t look back.

  “Papa?”

  The nozzle of the gun clinks against the newsbrane. In the clench of the Russian’s jaw and the snarl of his lip, Eliot can see the fighter recognizes him from Blumenthal’s office and remembers what he wants.

  It’s her or Iris, says the gun. You or him. Goddamnit, shoot!

  “Papa?”

  What are you waiting for? Shoot!

  The shot cracks and oil sprays the route map behind the Russian’s head. The fighter looks at his chest, bleeding black gunk from a giant hole.

  Eliot looks at the weapon. Betrayed, he thinks. I did not squeeze the trigger. I neither gave my assent nor felt the gun’s kick.

  The girl screams. The homeless bot lifts a shotgun above his cart. His hood falls revealing the onyx-colored face of the Satine. He racks the shotgun to fire again as he approaches Davydenko.

  “Tim, no!”

  The Russian lunges, and the two bots wrestle for the gun. Its barrel bends in their hands. Tim cartwheels across the car and kicks the Russian in the face.

  Eliot holsters the unused Glock and stands. He sees the girl hugging her Chug-Bot beneath the seats. He grabs for her, to protect her, to steal her, to kidnap her—he doesn’t know why. His hands move and he grabs, but the girl screams and shrinks away. She slides farther beneath the seats, and reflected in her fear, Eliot sees himself as a twisted monster in a child’s nightmare.

  Slugger catches the Satine and lifts him in the air. He slams the bot against the ceiling of the train. He slams him again as the dark android reaches for his blade.

  The Chug-Bot mimics the terror of its owner. Eliot pulls away, slipping on an oil slick, grabbing on to a pole to keep his balance. He sees the red fleck in the girl’s eye magnified behind a bulging tear, and he wonders, how could this happen? How could a goal so noble come to this? How could a love I felt for another turn me into this?

  Again, Slugger slams the Satine against the ceiling. His limbs break. His head dents like a fender. Oil cascades onto the giant Russian’s shoulders and face.

  Eliot backs away from the child. He drops his newsbrane and runs for the door on the front end of the car. He crosses between cars. He draws the stares of passengers as he slaloms between the hand poles toward the front of the train.

  “You!” says the Russian, standing at the end door. “Come here!”

  The passengers watch the oil-soaked bot limping in pursuit. Some record the action on their pocketbranes, others call the police for help. Others panic at the sight of this killing machine battling through his wounds to corner the heartbeat fleeing through the car.

  Eliot runs the length of the train as it nears the station in Heron. He approaches the front car, careful as his feet slip on the wet metal of the footplate. Still a hundred yards from the station, with Slugger a car behind, there won’t be time to escape. There won’t be space. He’s running out of time and space.

  Eliot releases the door to the front car and climbs to the top of the train. He pulls his body above the car. His fedora flies from his head. He flattens his stomach onto the wet, grooved metal and waits as the train drifts to a stop.

  Clouds of Heron’s black smoke forms on either side of him. The sooted rain muddies his clothes; the ashy wind blows hot against his neck.

  The doors open. The passengers flee en masse. Eliot can hear the stampede followed by warnings to stay away. The crowd of bots on the platform refuses to board.

  “Papa, Papa!” The girl leans out of a car in the middle of the train.

  “Back on the train,” yells the Russian, and the girl obeys.

  Eliot watches from the roof. He sees Slugger lope around searching for the mad heartbeat who tried to steal his little girl’s eyes. The conductor’s voice comes over the loudspeaker.

  “Next stop, Maywood. Stand clear of the closing doors.”

  Eliot waits so he can leap off the train with Slugger locked securely inside. The Russian boards. Eliot climbs to his knees and prepares to jump onto the platform.

  Ding-dong. The doors close. Eliot sees his moment.

  But just as his feet stuck to the ledge when he wanted to flee from the window of Pink’s apartment, so too does his body freeze atop the first car as the train gathers speed. His time to jump, to walk away, to turn back and abandon his mission—it fades as he watches the platform disappear behind him with the streets of Heron three stories below.

  The night air pushes against him. The train gains altitude as the ground slopes off into a cauldron of smoke and light. Eliot turns to face backward so the wind and rain don’t blind him. His legs straddle the parabola of the roof. He sees Slugger’s head pop up over the lip of the car. The rest of him follows. The giant bot climbs atop the roof and stands tall astride the flying train.

  Eliot scoots away, bringing his thighs together for a better hold. The bot approaches. He bleeds oil and drags his wounded foot, but his balance is perfect. It would be beautiful to watch were he stalking anyone else.

  “I thought they were yours,” Eliot shouts, pushing himself backward atop the rain-slicked grooves. “I didn’t know about the girl.”

  The Russian remains as indifferent to negotiation as he was in Blumenthal’s office. He keeps coming until Eliot reaches into the holster and fumbles for the gun. Only then does the bot pause. His eyes measure the trajectory of the nozzle, the velocity of the train, the caliber of the firearm and the man who holds it. Eliot’s hand shakes. He stares at the Russian across the sight of his weapon.

  “I didn’t know,” he says again.

  Davydenko charges forward, and Eliot fires without looking. Chin tucked, eyes shut, he squeezes off a volley of slugs. He pulls the trigger even after the last round is spent and the hammer clicks without firing.

  The train rambles on a choppy current of air as Eliot awaits Slugger’s attack. But it doesn’t come. He opens his eyes tentatively and sees no sign of the bot except for a streak of oil across the contoured roof of the train. He leans over to the side and sees the lit windows of factories illuminating the fog.

  “Hey,” says the conductor’s voice from the other side of the train. “Get off a’ there.”

  Eliot scoots perpendicular across the roof, looks down, and sees Slugger Davydenko, oil running from his wounds, holding his weight from a side window.

  “Get off a’ my train!”

  The conductor strikes at his fingers with a flashlight. The Russian reaches up and yanks him through the glass. The conductor’s uniformed body plunges into the low-lying smoke of the city.

  In a panic, Eliot pulls himself back to the center of the roof. His gun is useless now. No bullets. Nowhere to hide. No one steering the train. The first car lists and the others follow. Eliot scurries sideways like a hamster trying to keep his balance on the circumference of a turning wheel. He shimmies to the side, holds onto the corner of the roof and looks inside the train window. He sees a feeble passenger with Coke-bottle glasses clutching a handrail. Alone in the car, the passenger falls toward the conductor’s booth like a last piece of candy shaken inside an empty box. He pops around the seats until he finally makes it to the cockpit door. Slugger’s legs dangle on the opposite side of the car. His foot kicks through the glass before he swings inside the window.

  Suddenly, the train torques in the opposite direction, righting itself as the feeble pass
enger overcompensates on the yoke. Eliot climbs back to the top then slides backward as the train arcs into the air. He holds the grooves of the roof as he lowers himself between the hurtling cars.

  A hand grabs his ankle. Eliot looks down to see the Russian standing in the doorway. He loses his balance as the train banks abruptly and the two back cars whip into the side of a skyscraper. The glass shatters from the building as metal clashes with metal. The cars decouple and fall, tumbling and flipping before they hit the ground.

  The Russian grabs a door handle allowing Eliot to shake free. He falls between the footplates and catches the coupler on his way down. He holds on with his strong, mechanical hand while his organic body dangles in the air.

  Sirens whistle beneath him. Drones and floaters, launched from their bases, speed toward the flying train. The Russian stomps on Eliot’s fingers with his heel. Eliot sees a long bar that runs the length of the undercarriage. He grabs it and swings away from the coupler. He raises his legs and wraps them around the bar to relieve the burden from his injured hand. With his back against the city, Eliot crawls upside down, forearm over forearm, the length of the car. Looking between his legs, he can see Slugger lowering himself beneath the train.

  No quit in this bot, thinks Eliot. No chance he’ll ever give up.

  The first car lowers toward the river, dragging the remaining cars behind. Floaters glide alongside. Over a bullhorn, a pilot shouts directions to the cockpit, instructing the feeble passenger how to land.

  Eliot crawls beneath the train as it speeds above the river, dipping tentatively then jerking itself back up. The Russian catches up and positions himself beneath Eliot’s body. He wraps his muscled legs around Eliot’s midsection and squeezes his organs and his ribs. He uses one massive hand to hold his weight from the bar while a free arm is used to choke Eliot from behind.

  Androids peer out of their shanties as the train speeds above them. It winds along the river’s contours, arcing over bridges and feinting toward the surface with the rescue drones following swiftly behind.