Less Than Human

by Maxine McArthur

  They walked down the wide, clean passage. Homecoming workers were only just beginning to fill the space.

  “What department does your friend work for?” said Eleanor. The walls shifted in green-and-pink abstract patterns, and Bach tinkled softly from invisible speakers.

  Akita nodded in time to the music. “My friend is the systems manager at the Betta. He lets me use one of his storerooms to keep my equipment in.”

  “But you must have had access to an advanced laboratory to do the work on your hand …” Eleanor began, but paused. A cleanbot—one from a Zecom line, of course—was following them. There was no other word for it. The round, wheeled shape hugged the wall behind them, staying an even ten meters back. There were no other cleanbots in view.

  Akita noticed her gaze. “Is something wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” Eleanor kept walking, and looked over her shoulder as they turned a corner toward some elevators. The cleanbot came to the corner and plunged across the corridor, zigzagging frantically to avoid human legs. Then it settled down against the wall again.

  If she said I’m being followed by robots, he’d probably call a psych counselor.

  Three other people also waited for the elevators. Akita waved his card in front of the sensors, and the down light went on. The other people moved on to the next elevator.

  Welcome to Zecom Betta East, said the elevator in an attractive female voice.

  “I’ve got your visitor’s chip,” said Akita. He handed her the card, which she passed in front of the elevator’s internal sensors.

  Thank you, said the elevator. As the doors closed she could see the cleanbot motionless against the wall.

  Eleanor watched the numbers drop by two.

  Lower ground floor, authorized personnel only.

  “Here we are.” Akita led the way to a door labeled MANAGER, close to the elevator. “My friend’s away until later this evening,” he said.

  The apartment was large and Western-style, with bare walls and square black furniture. Two extra doors in the living room were labeled SECURITY and SYSTEMS.

  Akita noticed her glance. “The manager’s got access from here as well as through the main office. In case he needs to be contacted after hours.” He gestured at the low sofa. “Have a seat.”

  Eleanor sat on the edge of the sofa, shoving her handbag behind her feet. She did hope she’d been right about Akita’s interest being purely platonic. “Where do you keep your research equipment?”

  “Mostly in there.” He sat down heavily in one of the armchairs and pointed at an unlabeled door that Eleanor had assumed led to a bedroom. It didn’t reassure her.

  Akita leaned over and spoke into the arm of the chair. “Bring two drinks to the living room.” His pronunciation was so slow and clear that he must be talking to a Betta system.

  Sure enough, a few seconds later there was a whirring sound from the kitchen, and a squat, flat-topped helpbot hummed across the floor toward them, carrying a tray on its head. A shiny silver cylinder with multiple retractable appendages, it moved a little jerkily. Perhaps it needed a sensor upgrade. Or the room might have recently been rearranged, and that was confusing its navigation system. When it got to the sofa it stopped.

  Please take your drink. It sounded familiar, a synthesized version of Akita’s voice.

  She took one of the glasses of iced tea. “Nice touch.”

  “I think so.” He peeled off his gloves and took the other drink, letting her see how the artificial hand worked; the fingers held the glass, but the long, tonguelike appendages were free to manipulate other things, in this case a straw.

  “Can I, um, see the specs for that?” Eleanor stared unashamedly.

  “Of course.” Akita nodded seriously. “I am so glad you have decided to join me.”

  “Join you …?” Eleanor was being distracted by the helpbot. It seemed to be looking at her. How something with only a flat screen as an interactive surface could “look” at anything, she didn’t know. “Akita-kun, is there anything wrong with this robot?”

  He smiled. “It is different. Watch.” He clapped his hands, and the helpbot swiveled slightly, giving the impression that its attention had shifted to him.

  “Draw me the shape that has no end,” he said.

  The helpbot zoomed over to the middle of the room and ran slowly in a circle, leaving its vacuum appendage down so that the trail remained in the carpet pile. The circle was slightly egg-shaped.

  “That’s an impressive recognition program,” Eleanor said, and meant it. A helpbot was normally programmed to process only a handful of simple commands, certainly not metaphors.

  “It’s not a program. Tell it to do something.”

  “What…” Eleanor frowned at Akita, certain he was teasing her. “All right.” She clapped her hands. “Dance. You choose the step,” she added.

  The helpbot didn’t move for a moment or two. No way it could process an unspecific and arbitrary command like that.

  Then it began a jerky series of movements, slowly transcribing an arc. Seconds later, the apartment’s audio system activated, and the sounds of “The Blue Danube” echoed softly. The robot’s movements were in three beats.

  Akita laughed at the look on her face. It was a superior laugh, and Eleanor set her teeth.

  “What kind of processor have you got in there?” she demanded. Then to the robot. “Stop.”

  The robot kept dancing.

  Akita spread his hands wide. “An effective demonstration, you must agree, McGuire-san. As I told you, it is not a program.” He called to the robot. “Enough, Ken. You may finish now.”

  The robot stopped, and the music faded.

  “This way.” Akita rose and opened the door marked SYSTEMS. The room was filled with wall-to-wall monitors and consoles that spoke of the complexity of the Betta. At a desk in the middle of the room sat a man, with wires connecting his bare skull to a large console on the desk. One of his hands seemed to be stuck inside part of the console, via a huge glove that reached to his elbow. He wore shorts and an undershirt, and his body gleamed with sweat.

  The man shook his head as though waking from sleep and reached up with his free hand to disconnect the wires on his head. Then, very slowly and with many stops and starts, he withdrew his hand from the glove. His hand wore another glove, this one black with the shine of metallic thread.

  “Well done, Ken,” Akita said. “This is McGuire-san, but you two have already met. McGuire-san, this is one of my associates, Ken Fuijinaka.”

  The man turned in his seat and looked their way with thin, slanted eyes above high cheekbones. His eyes were slightly unfocused. The smooth, muscular shoulders in the dark undershirt were those of a young man, but his face was sallow and drawn. There was a line of drool down his chin, which he wiped with a shaking hand. He mumbled something at Eleanor and turned back to the console.

  “Ken will join us in a minute,” said Akita with a patriarchal air. “He is still learning. There is a certain lapse between in there and out here.”

  He pulled the door of the room closed again, forcing Eleanor to step backward into the apartment living room again. But she went no farther.

  “What is that?” She folded her arms and set her feet, not intending to budge until she got some answers. “What do you mean by ‘in there’?”

  Akita loomed closer. He was almost as tall as Detective Ishihara. But Ishihara had never intruded into her space like this. She could feel the warmth from Akita’s thinly shirted chest and smelled unwashed sweat and another, sweeter scent, like incense. He bent forward to speak, and she had to step back.

  “That, McGuire-san, is my new interface. It enables the user to control elements of a system from the inside.”

  He kept stepping forward as she retreated, until the back of her knees hit the sofa, and she had to stop.

  “Fujinaka-san could hear what we said and made the helpbot move? And he must have made that cleanbot move in the passage outside …” She still di
dn’t believe it. “A direct interface? But you’d still have to go through the programs. That would take hours, days.”

  “My interface is an intuitive thing.” Akita finally left her some space. He returned to his chair and finished his drink.

  Eleanor sat down again reluctantly. She wanted to examine this so-called interface for herself. Part of her had started to be excited at the possibilities, but she couldn’t let go of caution. It was probably an elaborate fake.

  “What do you mean by ‘intuitive’?” she said.

  He leaned back in his chair and raised his artificial hand in front of his eyes. With a theatrical gesture he smiled, turned the hand this way and that admiringly. The pale biometal flexed like a cluster of strange coral in an ocean current.

  The biometal converter on the Kawanishi robot…

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Things began to fit together. “You sold this new interface to the director at Zecom—Yui. That’s what Nakamura was testing.”

  Akita looked puzzled. “Nakamura? I don’t know who you mean. And I did not sell my interface to Yui-san. I merely provided him with some ideas that could lead to Zecom developing a watered-down virtual-reality version of my interface. He provided me with a reference for this job and certain other … privileges.”

  “And Nakamura blackmailed his supervisor Yui, then tested the interface using my … Tomita’s robot at Kawanishi Metalworks, which killed Mito by accident when he investigated.”

  “I don’t know what Yui did with my ideas.” Akita was back at admiring his hand. “I imagine it is plebeian and commercial.”

  “Commercial means you get money to do the research properly.” Eleanor was stung by his implied criticism of her own work.

  Akita shot her a shrewd look. “Or not, in your case.”

  “How did you manage to afford that, then?” She pointed at the systems room.

  “My work inspires a number of people who are glad to offer assistance.” He leaned forward, suddenly intense, his dark eyes fixed on hers. “I have discovered something more than another technological fix. I have discovered a way to give people hope.”

  “Hope for what?” She didn’t really care what Akita had dreamed up to justify begging for funding. What she did want to know was how the interface worked.

  “Hope for a different life. McGuire-san, you must see how we Japanese are tired of this relentless balancing act to maintain our economy.”

  “Yes, yes, development is blamed for everything from the breakdown of family life to new diseases,” said Eleanor restlessly. “I’m aware of the arguments on both sides. Can you get back to how it works?”

  He didn’t appear to hear her. “You see, in ancient times people believed in the unity of the physical world and the divine world. The divine cosmos, the Macrocosm, was a living manifestation of God. That is why our ancestors paid homage to spirits in trees, stones, and the weather.

  “Within it was the Microcosm, our physical world that reflected the divine cosmos and was ruled by it. Our own bodies, like those of every living thing, are also Microcosms. We are a reflection of the divine. We are simulacra of God.”

  Eleanor picked up her handbag. Interface or not, she had better things to do than listen to this.

  “With the domination of rationalism,” continued Akita, “we lost the knowledge of God and the divine world. We only know the physical world, and we think that is all there is. But if we do not know the divine for what it is, we can never become God.”

  Eleanor cleared her throat. “I, um, think I’d better go now.”

  “In my research I discovered a way to use science to become part of the Macrocosm ourselves, and thus divine. We are no longer reflections. That is why I said to you that your robots are no longer necessary. They are merely puppets, simulacra.”

  She stood up. “Akita-kun, I came to see an example of your research, in the hope this might lead to us collaborating. But if you can’t show me something more than an unproved demonstration and this ranting, I shall leave.”

  He looked up at her, his heavy eyebrows crooked in puzzlement. “I am explaining.”

  The door to the systems room opened, and Fujinaka stepped through, shutting the door behind him. He looked more composed now—he’d put on a collared shirt and had wiped his smooth head and face. His scalp was marked in places by the flat shine of the implants where the wires had been connected. He still wore the black glove on his left hand.

  “Nice to meet you, McGuire-san.” He looked her up and down in what Eleanor recognized as the Bold Young Man Sizing up Foreign Body stare.

  She ignored the look, as usual.

  “The Boss here”—Fujinaka pointed with his chin at Akita,—”has told us so much about you.” He sat down in the chair opposite Akita, so they flanked Eleanor.

  “Like what?” she said, momentarily distracted.

  “How you and he were the bright young hopes of Tomita Corporation.” Fujinaka grinned. His long eyes almost disappeared into his cheeks. “Before the Boss went freelance.”

  “I was not appreciated,” Akita said.

  “So you don’t work at a university?” Eleanor’s unease grew.

  “Academics have been particularly critical of my work.” Akita frowned. “They’ll regret that.”

  “The Boss has high hopes for you, McGuire-san.” Fujinaka tried another version of the Stare.

  To avoid his eyes on her crotch, Eleanor sat down again. “High hopes?”

  “With our new interface.” Fujinaka jerked his chin at the systems room. “The Boss is always telling us we need to study more about the Betta systems so we can use it properly, but none of us know enough. He reckons you’re an expert.”

  “Not on Betta systems as such,” protested Eleanor. “On some of the robots, perhaps. Tell me, how did you make the robot respond so quickly to my order to dance?”

  Fujinaka looked at Akita, who nodded. “I thought about dancing,” said the young man. “Only I couldn’t find a step you old fogeys would recognize for a while.”

  “It seemed like a while to him,” Akita put in, stroking his artificial hand with the other as he leaned forward. “To us it was much quicker. There is a time lag between our perceptions in the Ma … in the interface and our perceptions outside it.”

  Eleanor looked at Fujinaka’s gloved hand. “The synaptic connections are made through the nerve endings in the hand?”

  Akita nodded. “Sensory nerves. How ironic that we should be using those supreme servants of the body to conquer it.”

  Eleanor didn’t pay attention. She was trying to understand how it might work. You’d have to translate the electrical signals from the human brain into electrical signals that a computer could process …

  Fujinaka sat upright and put his hand on the large implant above his ear, listening. “He’s here,” he said to Akita. He glanced at Eleanor, and added cryptically. “You know, from the south.”

  “Where is he?” said Akita.

  “On his way up now. Something’s wrong.” Fujinaka glanced at Eleanor again and slid a phone out of his shorts pocket. “Do you want him to wait?”

  Akita smiled at Eleanor. “Of course not. We have no secrets from McGuire-san. She has decided to join us.”

  There it was again, the “joining” thing. As if Akita was talking about some special club. Mind you, if it was a club devoted to researching the new interface, she’d join.

  “If you’d like me to come back later …” she began insincerely.

  The front door of the apartment banged open. A slim man stood in the doorway, breathing heavily. He had a thin, ascetic face and was carrying a bulging briefcase. He strode forward, his eyes on Akita.

  “Adam-sama, we have a problem.”

  At 8:20 Ishihara’s desk phone buzzed. Mikuni’s face appeared on the screen, stretching sideways, then snapping back into proportion as the image stabilized.

  “Ishihara, I owe you an apology about the Zecom murder. We found a witness who places Yui outside
the Betta at eight o’clock. I don’t know how the Betta records can show him going in at 7:35, but we brought him in for an interview.”

  “Not an arrest?”

  Mikuni grimaced. “We couldn’t go that far. His DNA’s all over the lab, but you’d expect that. His fingerprints aren’t on Nakamura’s workstation, but there are plenty of gloved prints, very recent. We also got glove prints from the downstairs toilet. We brought him in mainly so that the witness could try to identify him.”

  “And?”

  “I’ll run the tape for you.” Mikuni’s face disappeared from the pickup, leaving a blurred image of his office. Then the screen darkened, and lightened again to show Mikuni talking to Yui over a desk in a bare interview room. A constable sat in the corner, monitoring the recording at a small computer.

  Yui was ticking items off on his fingers with exaggerated patience. If anything, Mikuni looked more uncomfortable than he did.

  “… I sent my suitcase home by courier from the airport. Then I got on the fast train to Okayama. When I reached the Zecom stop it was nearly five. I clocked in, greeted my assistant, then went into my office and checked my mail.

  “Then I met with the vice president and the managing director of the Marketing Division to give them an informal report on our situation in Jiangsu,” Yui went on. “After that I returned to my office, sent a couple of e-mails, then went home.”

  “That would have been about seven?” said Mikuni.

  “Probably a bit after.” Yui sighed. “I’m sure you confirmed that my assistant went home at seven.”

  “So you say you got in the monorail at the company, got out at the Betta West stop, and went straight home?”

  “That’s what I said. Shall we replay the recording so you can listen?” Yui drummed his fingers on the table in a show of irritation. It must be only show—Yui was far too cool to get flustered yet.

  Mikuni leaned forward. “Would it surprise you that the station videos show no record of you catching a train that night?”

  Yui raised his eyebrows. “No, it would not surprise me. Approximately seven thousand people live in the Betta and catch that train every day. What would surprise me is getting a clear image of everyone.” He regarded Mikuni almost pityingly. “Inspector, surely you aren’t trying to build a case around this?”