Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel

by Judd Trichter

  “Okay,” says the old detective, “let’s get this image to the drone operators so they know what they’re looking for. Alert the Coast Guard so it doesn’t leave shore. I want bird’s-eye images on every berth, public and private, from San Diego to Eureka. Keep a list of the location of every boat that’s covered by a tarp and have someone on the ground check it out. The name on the boat is Limbo, though it’s possible they’ve painted over it. Lets get a match on the make and model.”

  A junior detective taps on Flaubert’s shoulder. “Lieutenant Byron on hold for you, boss.”

  Flaubert takes the pocketbrane and answers the call.

  “You’ll never guess who turned herself in,” says the lieutenant.

  “Who?”

  “Plath. She just walked up to the front desk and said she has information about the Spenser murder.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  Blumenthal

  Right Pinky—Edmund “Pink” Spenser

  Left Arm—Uchenna

  Head—Jillian Rose Models

  Legs—Tucson Metal Solutions

  Torso—Chief Shunu/Joshua Dominguez

  Right arm—Lorca

  Eyes—Blumenthal Promotions

  Bodyguards linger in the parking lot chain-smoking outside the Blackeye Gym. They seem anxious and tense. It’s in the weather and the way people hurry off the street. The way they button their coats and tilt their hats down. The sirens and the floaters. The sky crawling with drones circling aimlessly, unsure where to look, what they’re looking for. The street isn’t stupid. That many machines buzzing in the sky, that many bots getting rounded up, that many prowlers slowing down to take a closer look—you’d have to be oblivious not to know the fuse is lit. The city’s ready to blow.

  Guards wand Eliot and Shelley at the door. Inside the gym, gen-modded pit bulls growl from their kennels in the back. There’s a drum of speed bags, slap of ropes, thud of gloves, clank of weights, sigh of bots recharging by the wall. It’s a noisy, crowded gym. Bells chime every three minutes to mark the end of a round. The whole place stinks of dog piss and burnt oil.

  A guard seats Eliot and Shelley outside Blumenthal’s office and tells them to wait.

  “No loops,” he says as Shelley raises his cam.

  Eliot takes a hit of drip on the bench. He hasn’t been home since he left for work the previous morning. After the disciples dropped him off near the tar pits, he knew better than to return to his apartment with Lorca’s arm. Instead, he took a bus to meet his brother on Naples Island in Long Beach, where Shelley had the boat tarped and moored to the dock outside a vacant home. They reattached the arm to the rest of the body and covered the wound with strips of smart metal flesh. They plugged her in on a timer so she wouldn’t be full of juice, she wouldn’t turn on and become who she’s going to be until evening, the very moment when Eliot and Shelley hoped to return with her eyes.

  The door opens and the brothers enter the office lined with shelves of stacked heads. There are black heads, white heads, women’s and men’s heads. Some have long, moving hair while others resemble the warmongering faces of long vanquished tribes.

  Blumenthal sits enormous behind his desk in a suit of stitched together money. His gold and porcelain face is weighted with a bulbous jowl and a large hooked nose. A cigar looks like a twig between the rings of his soft-knuckled fingers.

  “Twenty thousand ingots, well,” says Blumenthal, repeating Shelley’s offer in a resinous baritone.

  To the loan shark’s left, behind the desk, sits Slugger Davydenko, the pit’s most feared warrior, called in from his final preparations for the fight he has scheduled that evening. He wears a Spartan tracksuit and mirrored sunglasses to cover his eyes. The rigidity of his countenance barely conceals the contempt he holds for the two men across from him and the business they’ve come to discuss.

  “Mr. Blumenthal,” says Eliot, “with all due respect, you can get top-of-the-line eyes, brand-new, for a fraction of what we’re offering.”

  “As can you, well,” says the shylock.

  “But she’s a C-900,” says Eliot. “She won’t be the same if we mismatch her metal. I know you came upon the eyes honestly, but the previous owner stole them from a bot named Iris Matsuo. I would hope that you, as a fellow android, would have a desire that justice be served and the eyes be restored to their rightful owner.”

  “Justice?” Blumenthal puffs his cigar. “I don’t know about justice. I do, however, agree that the amount of twenty thousand ingots is sufficient. If the eyes belonged to me, I would gladly and without negotiation accept your offer.”

  “It’s my understanding,” says Shelley, “that Mr. Davydenko belongs to you. And as the bot belongs to you, so do all of his parts. Which gives you the legal authority to make decisions on his behalf.”

  Blumenthal nods, acknowledging the clever feature of the law that allows one android to own another. “And though I agree I am not legally bound to consult with Mr. Davydenko, I still see it as a moral obligation to do so. Even to one’s chattel,” says the loan shark, “one must act with consistency and honor. I fear to think what would become of my reputation were I to demand something back that I had already given as a gift.”

  Eliot fidgets in his chair. There isn’t much time, and he doesn’t want this to drag. “Name your price,” he says to Slugger directly. “Whatever it is, I’m willing to pay.”

  “Easy,” Shelley warns his brother, but Eliot ignores him.

  “Mr. Davydenko, you’re not a C-900. You’ll be the same bot but with different eyes, perhaps eyes that suit you better. Perhaps eyes that give you an even greater advantage in the pit than those that belonged not to a fighter but to a creative.”

  Shelley pulls at his brother’s shirt, but Eliot knocks his hand away.

  “Name your price,” he says again. “You’ll have enough to buy your freedom and become a free roamer if you want. But most important, you will be restoring those eyes to a bot who needs them more than you. Who cannot exist without them. How can you have it in your conscience to say no to such an offer?”

  The mirrored lenses on the fighter’s face hide any change in position that might be revealed by his expression.

  “She was a toy maker,” Eliot continues. “She loved children. She wanted to be a teacher so she could see the world through a child’s eyes.”

  Blumenthal puts a calming hand behind his fighter’s neck. “Do you understand what’s happening here?” he asks his bot. “This heartbeat has attached a special value to something that on the open market is of modest worth. And it just so happens that the thing he values is something you own but do not need. A replaceable part for you but not for him. Now, he has laid bare on the table, unwisely as I’m sure he’d admit, that he is willing to give everything he has for these C-900 eyes. And he has a considerable sum.”

  The shylock lowers his voice to express words meant only for the bot.

  “You’ve had them for what?” he asks. “A month? You couldn’t possibly be that attached.”

  Slugger Davydenko says nothing. There’s no indication that he has even understood the offer much less considered it. Then again, the Russian bot is not designed to engage in negotiations. He wasn’t built to conduct business across a desk. He was built to break femurs and crush skulls, to tear limbs and raze houses, to cause quick and painful death. He was built to maim, to burn, to rape, to intimidate and exterminate an arbitrarily assigned enemy, in desert, mountain, or urban terrain. Or in a pit if need be.

  Blumenthal taps his cigar in an ashtray. “If I were you I’d take the deal,” he tells his fighter.

  Slugger looks toward the door then stands from his chair. Without so much as a word, he leaves the office to resume his workout and prepare for his scheduled evening of violence. He offers no counter proposal or explanation for his departure from the meeting. He leaves no room for further talks.

  “There you have it.” Blumenthal shrugs. “I hope you recog
nize I made a valiant effort.” He relights his cigar and turns his attention to Shelley. “Now let’s talk about that piece you’re going to loop about me in Revealed!”

  Shelley holds his tongue until he and his brother are alone in the car. He lights a joint, takes a hit, and quickly puts it out.

  “Do you know they mass produce pussies in France?” he asks. “You fuck one, you’ve fucked ten million. There’s no Goddamn difference.”

  Eliot checks the mirrors and the drones in the sky. He puts the visor down to cover his face.

  “Aw, hell, Eliot, buy her some good eyes. Put a red fleck in ’em if that’s what’s you need.”

  “Eyes are important. Window to the soul and all that.”

  “There is no soul.” Shelley shakes his head in frustration. “It’s just a balance of parts and experiences. Soul,” he says the word again with disdain.

  Eliot notices a blue car behind them. Is it Flaubert or the Indian from the casino? Are the Militiamen after him now or is it someone else? The car turns down a side street, and Eliot looks forward up the road.

  “Quit while you’re ahead,” says Shelley. “Make do with what you got, and stay alive. For Chrissake, what’s more important than staying alive?”

  The pain burns across Eliot’s shoulder as he watches the road through the window. He remembers the conversation he had with the old detective about Orpheus. Eliot reviewed the story in Ovid sometime after. He read of Orpheus’s turning back at the last moment and losing his fiancée the moment before she was to return to Earth.

  Why did Orpheus look back? Eliot wonders. Was he trying to sneak a peak and hoping the gods wouldn’t notice? They’re gods, for crying out loud, nothing escapes them. Was it a stamina issue, i.e. he tired and forgot himself? Or was he so in love, as Ovid believed, that he couldn’t resist? Why then, after her second death, when he begged Charon to take him back to the underworld, did Orpheus quit after “seven days huddled along the banks of Styx?”

  Perhaps the great poet secretly wanted to send her back to the underworld because he preferred to long for her than to live with her. Maybe that’s what allowed him to compose the great song he sung on that plain atop the hill which was “endowed with green but had no shade.”

  And then there’s the part the old detective left out. After Orpheus was murdered, when his limbs were scattered by the Thracian women and his soul was driven out:

  The Shade of Orpheus

  Descends beneath the earth. The poet knows

  Each place that he had visited before;

  And searching through the fields of pious souls,

  He finds Eurydice. And there they walk

  Together now: at times they are side by side;

  At times she walks ahead with him behind;

  At other times it’s Orpheus who leads—

  But without any need to fear should he

  Turn round to see his own Eurydice.

  So Orpheus lived a few years apart but in death was reunited with his love. According to the rules of the universe set by the myth, Orpheus could have just killed himself at any time and reunited with her immediately. He chose not to. Instead, he decided to write poems then see his love again when his work was done.

  But these ain’t my options, thinks Eliot. This ain’t ancient Greece, it’s modern-day Los Angeles, and there is no afterworld where souls reunite and hold hands into eternity. And I’m no fucking lyric poet.

  “What time is Slugger’s fight?” he asks his brother.

  THIRTY-TWO

  A Confession

  The old detective coughs as he passes a chain of androids strapped together, pressed closely, some crying, others complaining they’ll be late for work.

  “I’m runnin’ low on juice, man.”

  “Please, I’m gonna get fired.”

  Patrol is widening the net. They’re breaking down doors, rounding up every bot on the street, bringing in any rogue with a warrant or a ticket or a scowl.

  Flaubert enters the observation room. He sees Lieutenant Byron and the captain sitting in the dark watching an interview through the one-way mirror.

  “Look,” says Byron, his terseness more pronounced than usual. “Plath.”

  Beyond the glass, a young officer questions an android with a black bandana on her head and a pinky missing from her hand. She seems to find her situation amusing.

  “She’s confessed to the Spenser murder,” says the captain. “She knows details we didn’t release. There’s a matching finger with her serial number in the evidence room.”

  “I always maintained she was at the scene,” says Flaubert. “That doesn’t make her the killer.”

  “You think the newsbranes will buy that?”

  “Does the press do our investigating?”

  The lieutenant knocks a chair across the room. “Don’t try me today, detective. Your stock isn’t exactly on the rise around here.”

  Flaubert coughs and wipes his mouth with a handkerchief. It’s the hardest part of every investigation: fighting the guys on your own team.

  “Does she know anything about Ochoa?” he asks.

  “She hasn’t said.”

  “And about Lazar?”

  “We haven’t asked.”

  The old detective approaches the intercom and presses the button that allows him to speak into the interrogator’s earpiece.

  “Ask her if there was anyone else at the apartment besides her and the deceased.”

  The interrogator asks and Plath shakes her head with a smirk directed toward the mirror.

  “Ask her why she left her pinky finger at the scene.”

  The interrogator asks about the pinky.

  “I couldn’t find it,” says Plath.

  “Ask her why she cleaned the scene.”

  “I guess I’m just a tidy person.”

  “Ask her where she got the gun.”

  “Under the mattress.”

  “Ask how much she took from Pink’s wallet?”

  The interrogator looks back over his shoulder.

  “Go on,” says Flaubert.

  The interrogator asks.

  “I’m not the type to leave money around,” says Plath.

  “Do you remember how much you took?”

  The digger smiles and bats her eyelashes. “All of it,” she says, leaning lasciviously across the desk.

  Flaubert turns to his superiors in the room. “The gun was stolen by somebody matching Lazar’s description. The victim’s wallet was found full of his evening’s pay. A few hundred ingots, as you can see in the report. Her finger was left in the open pinned to a board on the wall of the closet. It would have been easy for her to find.”

  The captain takes off his glasses and lays them on the table so he can rub his eyes. Flaubert argues that they should stop treating her like the culprit in the Spenser murder and start treating her like a suspect in the disappearance of his partner.

  Byron rages to his feet. “You’re not in charge here, detective.”

  “Neither are you,” says the captain.

  The lieutenant shrinks into his desk like a student who blurted out the wrong answer to an easy question. The captain nods, indicating he’ll allow Flaubert to proceed. The old detective speaks again though the intercom. “Ask if she knows Eliot Lazar.”

  “Who’s that?” says Plath. “I’ve never heard that name before in my life.”

  “Ask about Ochoa.”

  “A detective?” says the girl. “I don’t know. What’s he look like?”

  “Big guy,” says the interrogator. “Mexican. He wears a patch over one eye.”

  “Oh, the one-eyed pig!” Plath covers her mouth as she laughs. “Sure, I know him. I found him sleeping in a garage in Century City.”

  “Oh, shit,” says Byron. “Oh, steaming pile of shit.”

  Flaubert feels the bits of broken glass stuck in the lining of his lungs, his arteries, his heart. He feels it all slipping away. Not only his partner, not only his work, but something large
r. Everything he has worked for, everything he has believed in is loosening from his grasp.

  “He was a real fat one-eyed son of a bitch,” says Plath. “Stunk like an ape and bled like a pig when I stuck him.”

  The interrogator asks Plath what she means.

  “You mean you didn’t see the loop?” she asks, smiling. “It’s entertaining as all. I sent it to the newsbranes before I got here, but I guess they haven’t run it yet.”

  Flaubert sees in the digger’s face the lightness of one who’s enjoying herself.

  “It’s a real good loop,” says Plath. “You can see the moment he shits himself before he dies.”

  That equanimity in her eyes, that brainwashed assurance that she’s bound for Heaven, awakes Flaubert to the emergency of the situation. Absent the student, the mentor’s instincts return. He asks to his superiors. “Was she searched when she came in?”

  “She was no longer a suspect,” says the lieutenant. “She came in on her own.”

  “Did she limp?” Flaubert asks. “Were her limbs scanned for explosives?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why not?” asks the captain.

  Flaubert speaks into the intercom. “Get out of there,” he tells the interrogator. “Get out right now.”

  The young officer presses the earpiece with his finger as he glances over his shoulder at the glass. The lieutenant and the captain run for the exit. Flaubert drops to the floor and pulls a desk over his head.

  “Praised be Lorca,” says the android Plath. “Holy Mother sends her regards.”

  The room contains the initial explosion that coats a layer of blood and oil over the mirror. The secondary blast, however, produces a burning blizzard of shrapnel that tears through the room and the concrete walls and every living thing in its path.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Girl

  Evening.

  Main event at the Brewery.