Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel

by Judd Trichter

  Slugger Davydenko, Russian android, most feared pit fighter in the city, takes on eight bots at once in a battle royale. All of them top-of-the-line metal. Whoever survives gets the belt. His owner gets the purse. Losers go to the scrap heap unless some parts are worth recycling.

  Eliot sits in press row. Wears a coat and Shelley’s credentials in his fedora. Holds a camera and takes a few loops. Dead, captured, or escaped, this thing ends tonight. One way or another, it all comes to a head tonight.

  Right from the bell, the other bots attack the champ. Slugger’s the one to beat. Get him out quick and they each stand a chance. Wind up against him one-on-one and you can forget it. Too strong. Too tough. Too fucking nuts.

  Eliot wants the bots to kill him without damaging his eyes. Then Eliot could make an offer directly to Blumenthal. He’d have everything then. Stick the eyes in Iris’s head, power her up, hit the switch. She’d know nothing of the last few months. The night with Pink would be the last thing she remembered, but she’d be herself again. She’d be whole. She’d be Iris.

  Ten seconds in, Slugger Davydenko dents an android’s head with the back of his hand. A minute later, he punches through a bot’s chest and pulls out the poor bastard’s engine. Rips out the cords and wires. Tears off the limbs and twists the bot’s head 180 degrees.

  The audience screams. Eliot turns away. Getting the eyes off this freak isn’t going to be easy. One of the fighters has buzz saws for hands, and even he’s no match. Buzz saws, for Chrissake, but Slugger grabs his elbows and uses the blades against him. He splits the fucker in half.

  “It’s like it’s routine for him,” he tells Shelley through his earpiece. “It’s like he’s doing his laundry.”

  “He’s probably done more killing than laundry.” Shelley sits in his car outside the Brewery. He and his brother communicate through new earpieces purchased that day so they can’t be traced. “He’ll be weaker after the fight, after he’s injured and low on juice. You’ll have to hit him before his autorepair heals his wounds.”

  In the pit, Slugger gets it down to two bots and himself. Then it’s down to one. Then it’s over. The battle lasted all of eight minutes.

  “Still looks pretty strong to me.”

  The crowd thins. The lights come on. A maintenance team cleans the stands. The newsmen exit to the bar down the street to file on their workbranes and put tonight’s drinks on tomorrow’s checks.

  Eliot walks to the basement and waits along the hallway wall. He hides his face behind his brother’s loop-cam as Slugger passes with the championship belt slung over his shoulder. There’s a wound on his chest, an opening where the oil drips out. Eliot snaps a loop as the tired fighter closes the locker room door.

  “Got eyes on him?” Shelley asks.

  “Locker room.”

  Blumenthal’s voice precedes his entrance. Eliot turns away and pretends to check his brane. With his coterie of bodyguards, the shylock cavaliers into the dressing room while Eliot spies through the door left slightly ajar.

  “Good performance tonight.” Blumenthal pats his fighter on the cheek. He hands over a few ingots, and slugger thanks him in Russian. “And, as promised” The shylock hands the wounded bot a shopping bag with a toy store logo. “Heal up and recharge. I want you in the gym Monday morning.”

  Eliot exits into the rain and trots across the street to where Shelley waits in his car. He hands over the loop-cam as he gets in.

  “He’s wearing jeans and a black hoodie. Should be out in a minute.”

  He pulls Shelley’s Glock from the glove compartment and loads it with bullets designed to penetrate Kevlock skin.

  “Hit him close,” says Shelley. “No more than ten feet away, or it’ll just piss him off.”

  Eliot pockets a plastic bag in which he plans to put the eyes once he pulls them out of Slugger’s head. He watches as the fighter exits the Brewery alone. Mirrored sunglasses conceal the bruises on his face.

  “Aim for his engine,” says Shelley. “Try to do it as the train pulls in.”

  Autograph hounds approach the android for his signature. A cub reporter holds a recording device toward his mouth but the Russian kindly shakes his head. He carries a backpack over his shoulders and the toy store shopping bag in his bandaged hand. He limps down the street toward the station for the flying train.

  “Keep the engine running,” says Eliot.

  “Good luck.”

  Eliot conceals the Glock off his right hip. He gets out 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 hits 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 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 that 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 El
iot 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 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.

  Shoot, Goddamnit, says the gun. It’s her or Iris, you or him.

  “Papa?”

  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 and twists 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 other end.

  “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. Some 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 hi
s 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. He 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 wonted 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 of the roof. “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 site of his weapon.