The Automatic Detective

by Martinez A. Lee

  It wasn't pretty and took twelve seconds longer than it should've, but I got to my knees. I could scan the ground. I knew which way was down. But without the gyros, I'd have to calculate weight distribution with each move I made. It would've slowed me down if I were in tip-top shape and knew exactly what to expect from myself. But with all my impaired internals, I would have to adapt to so many new variables that it was statistically impossible for me to get the hang of it this side of seven hours.

  Sometimes, statistics were wrong.

  I stood. The gyros spun, but I ignored their input. I swayed two inches to the left, overcorrected, and tilted three to the right. I tried counterbalancing with my left arm, but it made a harsh grinding as shoulder gears were stripped, rendering the appendage now entirely useless. An attempt to straighten up was a complete failure. All the damage and the sucking mud proved too much of a challenge. I collapsed on my back. My neck joint was so damaged that it couldn't move. All I could scan was the sky. I was supposed to be an invincible mechanical death machine, and I didn't accept my position with grace or logic. Sixteen seconds of ineffective twitching confirmed that getting up was now out of the question.

  A black rotorvan passed low overhead and set down just out of sight. I detected the sound of approaching rotors. The salvage team had arrived. Their squishy footsteps drew closer. Something clamped onto my leg and dragged me through the mud. I was lifted out of the muck and tossed into the van, where I lay like a pile of scrap.

  Grey sat beside me, clad in a bright red biohazard suit. His static-filled voice issued through the plastic bubble around his head. "Hi'ya, Mack."

  Doctor Zarg had said I wouldn't have to find Greenman. Greenman would find me.

  "Hello." I nodded, and nothing in my neck joint popped. A pleasant surprise.

  Knuckles climbed into the van and beeped once.

  "You look like hell," said Grey.

  "Oh, this? It's nothing. My warranty should cover it."

  Smiling, Grey shut the doors as the van lifted off.

  16

  I kept thinking of Julie and April and Holt. I'd found them. Then I'd lost them. I'd practically scrapped myself in the process. The entire mission was a failure.

  The rotorvan carried me to an undisclosed location. I assumed it was undisclosed since I didn't bother asking and no one told me.

  "Can you walk?" asked Grey. "Or should I have Knuckles here fetch a gurney?"

  I should've asked for the gurney and avoided any unnecessary stress to my systems. But a bot has his pride, so I limped my way through what scanned like a warehouse full of toys: mostly little Gabby Goosey dolls and My First Android drones.

  There was also a nice collection of rotorcars: expensive machines, all shiny and perfect, like they'd never been flown. Greenman was definitely a collector. The prize of the seven I scanned was a beauty of a teal Hornet. It had a rounded body with a convertible cockpit, superfluous wings and fins, a spacious trunk, and plenty of legroom, even for a bot of my proportions.

  Guys in black suits with zap rifles at the ready roamed the warehouse. They didn't seem to have anywhere to go. From their humorless expressions, they sure seemed determined in their wandering. Tucked away in a back corner of the place was an e-mech repair room outfitted with all the latest equipment, including four e-mech drones and another robot model identical to Doctor Zarg. Except he had a different symbol painted on his torso.

  Right in front of me was Abner Greenman. The shortest guy in the room, but the most dangerous. Especially now that I was damaged goods.

  "So good of you to join us, Mack," said Greenman. "Please, lay down on the table so the doctor can have a look at you."

  "I'll stand. Thanks."

  Greenman frowned. "Come on, Mack. You could use the repairs. I assure you Doctor Zort is the finest robotics technician on this planet. His original ravager specs are the foundation of your design. Isn't that correct, Doctor?"

  "Correct," said Zort.

  "Forget it. I don't open this chassis for anybody."

  "Illogical," said Zort. "You are in need of maintenance." He trundled over along with his drones. "Allow me to assist you to the table."

  I threw my forearm into one of the drones. Since it was nothing but a multi-armed cylinder on wheels, it fell over easy.

  "Back off, Doc."

  Knuckles made a move toward me. He would've wiped the floor with me in my condition, except Greenman stopped him.

  "Mack, I feel compelled to help you because believe it or not, I respect you. Hell, I like you, but we can't fix you if you won't let us. So tell me, what do I need to do to earn your trust?"

  The odds of Greenman earning my trust were so small that when my difference engine calculated to the seven millionth decimal point I rounded it off and just called it zero.

  "Lucia Naper," I said. "Get her here, and she can fix me."

  "Surely, you're aware the lovely Miss Napier is under arrest." His antennae twitched. "Something to do with a prison break, I believe."

  "You've got connections, I bet."

  "Perhaps I do." He smiled. "But before I put gears in motion, perhaps there's something you'd like to give me."

  I didn't play it cute. No reason to. I let the finger Zarg had given me fall from the socket. Greenman snagged it telekinetically before it hit the ground. He floated it over to Grey's hand.

  "Thank you."

  "No problem," I replied.

  Greenman nodded to Grey, who nodded back. He left to go set those gears in motion.

  "I suppose you think you've earned an explanation," said Greenman.

  "What's to explain? You're aliens. They're aliens. They're up to something. You want to stop them. Am I close?"

  "We prefer the term Pilgrims."

  "And mutants want to be called genetically enabled. But it probably isn't going to catch on."

  Greenman smiled with his little mouth and blinked his big, fishy eyes. "We aren't evil, if that's what you think. We only need a place to live. You of all beings should be grateful for our arrival on this world. Without us, you wouldn't even exist."

  He wasn't telling me anything I hadn't calculated on my own. I may not have been the smartest bot, but I'd scanned enough to get the larger picture. Somehow, I was tied to these Pilgrims. All of Empire was.

  "Believe it or not, it was purely by happenstance that we came to Earth. We were a colonization ship headed to a far different star system. An unfortunate malfunction in our warp drive threw us off course. One in a million fluke. We should've died in space but for the good fortune of finding this world. However, the world was already inhabited by intelligent life-forms, and they were not advanced enough to accept us."

  "You could've asked."

  "We couldn't afford to ask," he said. "Our ship didn't have the power to leave this system, and our faster-than-light communications were damaged. We were cut off from our homeworld by the inhospitable vastness of space. We needed a new home, and if the earthlings would not have us, we couldn't force them."

  "You're telling me this isn't an invasion."

  He chuckled. "We're one colony ship with a population of ten thousand chosen from two dozen different species. Though we have weapons, and they are far superior to the armaments of the earthlings, we could not possibly hope to overcome this world's defense forces."

  "You're breakin' my power cell."

  Greenman frowned. "You prove my point exactly, Mack. Now that you know what I am, you assume I'm an amoral monster. But we are a moral people. As moral as the people of earth."

  "That's not saying much, Abner."

  "Are you sure we couldn't have Doctor Zort take a look at you? At the very least, he might be able to adjust your personality template. Perhaps lower that nasty cynicism index a bit."

  "I concur with this assessment," said Zort. "This unit's behavioral functions remain dangerously unpredictable. Despite the previous data cleansing, his motivational directives contain obvious corruption. It remains impai—"


  "I advise you not to finish that sentence, Zort. Or else I might have to come over there and show you how corrupted my motivational directives have become."

  It was an idle threat, but it seemed to do the trick.

  "The hostility of this unit renders my presence here unnecessary." Then he left.

  Greenman laughed. "I do believe you frightened the doctor, and that's saying something. You're not very popular among the technomorphs."

  "Ask me if I care." I limped over to the table and had a seat to take the pressure off my actuator, which my diagnostic warned had a 2 percent chance of shattering with every step.

  "So what's in the finger?" I asked.

  "That doesn't concern you at this moment."

  "You owe me."

  "Yes, and that's why I'm going to considerable trouble to fetch the notorious Miss Napier. I'd say we were even." He rose and sat, hovering in midair. "However, though the technomorphs may consider you a defective unit, I believe a bot like you could be useful in my employ."

  "Not interested."

  He wagged his finger. "Ah ah, Mack. Don't turn me down just yet. Wait until you hear my offer. I'm not talking about a permanent position. More of a work-for-hire proposition."

  "Still not interested."

  "Not even if I could tell you the secrets of your origin, of this vast alien conspiracy and your place in it? And believe me, you do have a very important place."

  I only wanted to get fixed and go home, maybe lower my surge protectors, plug in, and hope I could overload my memory matrix and wipe the whole thing. Erase Greenman and the Pilgrims, these last three days, and even Julie, April, and Holt. Just reactivate as a simple cab-driving machine.

  "You can pretend not to care," said Greenman, "but you do. That defective electronic brain of yours is too prone to sentimentality, concerned with certain illogical motivations. Drives the technomorphs mad, believe me. They assumed you were the next step in their evolution, yet they can't reconcile the apparently randomization of your behavior."

  I didn't say anything, and he shrugged, gently floating to the floor.

  "Have it your way, Mack, but you can't tell me you aren't curious. We'll talk later."

  Whistling, he strolled out the door. It was only me, the e-mech drones, and Knuckles. And none of us felt like talking.

  Forty-six minutes later, the door opened again and Lucia came in, escorted by Grey and Greenman.

  I was painted gold and my chassis was dented, but uncompromised. Lucia could tell by the way my arm hung limply and the crack in my optical that I'd seen better days. She ran over and put her arms around me. I didn't hug her back because I still wasn't confident in my strength regulators.

  "Mack, oh my, are you okay?"

  "It only hurts when I compute," I said. "How'd you get her out, Abner? No way Sanchez would've agreed to it."

  "Oh, like I said, I know people," replied Greenman. "As far as most everyone is concerned, Miss Napier remains in her cell, and she'll have to get back there soon. She should have enough time to complete your repairs. Assuming we begin right away."

  "Yes, yes, of course," said Lucia. "I'm going to need you to lean back on the table and deactivate, honey."

  I lay down, casting one quick scan at Greenman and Grey. If I opened my chassis and shut down, I'd be helpless and vulnerable. Underneath my indestructible chassis, my internals were as fragile as any other heavy-duty construction robot.

  Lucia activated a scanner, which proceeded to analyze my damage and display it on a screen as a schematic filled with blinking red dots. Lots and lots of blinking red dots. Leaking hydraulics. Stripped joints. A support armature full of microfractures.

  An e-mech handed her a laserweld. "Mack, baby, please, you'll have to deactivate."

  "I don't trust them," I said.

  "Then don't trust them." She leaned over me and put both hands on either side of my cranial unit. "Trust me."

  I needed the fix, and I didn't have a lot of options. Broken if I did, and broken if I didn't. Self-preservation was a bitch of a directive sometimes.

  "Okay, Lucia."

  I lowered my power levels slowly as I ordered my chassis open.

  I peered down at my mechanical guts. In the center of the arrangement was a seven-inch cube. My brain whirred and clicked audibly as thousands of programs carried out their work.

  "Don't worry, Mack. I'll have you good as new," Lucia said.

  Her smile was the last thing I scanned before deactivating.

  17

  I went off-line regularly for short periods as part of my recharge and defragmentation cycle. But even while recharging, my array was aware of my surroundings. It ignored most everything and didn't bother recording, but it was still aware. If someone wanted to sneak up and access my systems, they wouldn't get far before I'd switch back on.

  Deactivation was different. It was a complete, system-wide shutdown. If off-line status was comparable to biological sleep, then deactivation was a coma. No data. No time. Nothing. Some claimed biologicals thought during comas, and maybe they did. But not me. I was oblivious to the world. On the bright side, it made the repair session go by in a snap.

  Reactivating from a full system shutdown took a little longer than normal. I prioritized my face and vocal recognition programs and waited for the mechanical support to kick on-line.

  The first thing I noticed was Lucia's face. There was a smear of grease on her chin, and her eyes were heavy. Her hair was all over the place.

  "Morning, handsome."

  I was about to ask how long I'd been down when my internal clock informed me that it was now twenty-five minutes past one in the morning. I'd been down for five hours and change.

  "Is he fixed?" asked a guy in a gray suit who stood guard.

  Lucia wiped her brow. "He's fixed."

  "Running diagnostics," I replied coldly. My speech synthesizer was not high on my list of concerns.

  "Why, Mack, baby," said Lucia with a smile. "I thought you agreed to trust me." She pushed a button and the table slowly tilted forward until I was on my feet. "Any time you're ready."

  My gyros listed as all in agreement, and my ankle actuator was A-OK. I took a step and didn't fall over. I tested my shoulder joint with a few waves of my arm, and I stomped each foot three times to see if my frame was solid. Nothing rattled loose. My right knee rotator didn't stick at thirty-five degrees anymore. It'd been doing that since I'd been built.

  "I did some preventative maintenance while I was in there," she said. "Hope you don't mind."

  The gold paint job was gone, and I was now lusterless silver. The drones approached and began to slap on a coat of automated citizen red. Once they'd finished, I looked as shiny and new as an auto fresh off the assembly line.

  "I had Greenman's boys go by my place and pick up a few things. There's a new suit over there."

  She pointed to a custom-tailored job hanging in the corner. This one was black with vertical stripes. I slipped it on. Lucia had to help me with the tie.

  She grabbed a thin book off a table and handed it to me.

  "What's this?"

  "Manual," she said. "For the suit. Scan it. Shouldn't take you more than a minute or two."

  It took exactly seventy seconds to absorb the fifty-five-page manual. The suit was more than a sharp outfit. Lucia called it an illusion suit, and it had color-changing fabric and a hologram emitter network imbedded in the fabric. After I'd read up on its functions, she suggested I try them out. While repairing me, she'd installed a radio remote to make using the gadgets as basic as walking.

  I ran the suit through a variety of color shifts and preset patterns, including an unlikely design of purple with lime flowers. The hologram was able to project either isolated images around my mechanical bits or body-wide images. The preprogrammed disguise was that of a green-skinned mutant. Nothing too fancy, but enough to justify my proportions and afford me some anonymity.

  "Using the body-wide will drain the battery fast," she sai
d. "So use it sparingly. Figured you might need some form of disguise if you're going to be on the lam. Can't disguise your proportions, and if you move too fast you'll overtax the system and the images might blur."

  She handed me a thick metal belt. "I call it a booster belt. Seven miniature rocket pods built into it. They can't run for extended flight, but they'll get you airborne. About seventy feet or so per boost. Also, it's got the next generation gravity clamp. Turn that on, and nothing will move you. I guarantee it."

  I slipped on the belt, and gave the boosters a quick test fire. I hopped five feet in the air and landed with a clang. Next up was the gravity clamp. Switching it on, I was immediately anchored to the floor. The pull was so strong as to crack the linoleum. Those bugaboos of mass and momentum wouldn't be much of a problem as long as this baby was running.

  "What do you think?" she asked.

  "I'll take it. You whipped these up pretty fast, Lucia. I'm impressed."

  "Actually, I had the prototypes ready for awhile. I'm a genius, Mack, but I'm not that good. They aren't practical except for seven-foot, ultra-strong robots. The hologram irritates flesh with continued exposure. Makes it itchy as hell. The gravity clamp would crush most biologicals. And the boosters—" she shrugged "—they tend to cause second degree burns around the waist and crotch area, which places severe limits on the potential market."

  She handed me a hat. I cupped it loosely in my hand so as to not crush the felt. Though Lucia assured me it wasn't felt, and it'd pop back into shape even if completely flattened.

  "This is a fedora," I said.

  "That's right. I see your hat distinguishing programs are running just fine."

  "I had a bowler."

  "Oh, Mack, don't you go to the picture shows?" she said. "Oh, wait, I bet you don't."

  "I've seen a movie or two," I said. "Or six and a half."

  "Half, huh?"

  "I walked out of The Day the Earth Stood Still once it became clear Gort wasn't the hero."

  She straightened my tie. "Well, Mack, if you've seen any crime pictures, you'd know all detectives wear fedoras."