Some staff members, blushing and giggling, made their exits, but most settled back into their seats.
Five king-sized beds were wheeled onto the stage and arranged for optimum viewing. The vice president paired off the robots and directed them to perform with one another.
All still smiling blankly, the robots complied, taking to the beds and proceeding to perform an extensive repertoire of vigorous sexual gymnastics that brought applause, oohs, and ahhs from the audience. They cheered and whooped when the two convertible androids paused in their coupling, separated, transformed into the other sex, and resumed.
But as titillating as the performances were, Garry was distracted. Blount’s attitude had been particularly threatening when he forbade Garry from accessing the operating system. Something didn’t feel right. So, naturally Garry decided he should do a bit of exploration on his own . . . for his official assignment, of course.
A wet tearing sound, like a boot being pulled from mud, echoed through the darkened warehouse.
The Gamma model Domestic Helper Andrew stood impassively, his usual faint robotic smile on his lips, as Gregory Mencken peeled his old skin off his torso, leaving his translucent, glimmering electrogel flesh. Andrew remained perfectly functional. The secondskin was only a covering, although Andrew no longer had a sense of touch, since the skin contained the sensors for that purpose. Andrew could still move, however, because the electrogel was not only his artificial flesh, but the gelatinous battery that powered him.
Mencken, an elfin engineer with intense brown eyes, stopped to inspect the robot’s structures vaguely visible beneath the gel—Andrew’s gray carbon nanotube bones, the taut black cables of his muscles, and the super-strong graphene chamber in his chest that enclosed his brain. Mencken didn’t expect any damage. After all, according to Mikhail, Andrew hadn’t overstressed his frame; only lifted a few hundred pounds that wouldn’t have done any damage. Andrew could lift about eight hundred pounds with no problem. Mencken guessed the lifted object was a body, but he knew better than to ask for more detail.
At Mencken’s command, Andrew raised his hand, and Mencken peeled away its secondskin like a glove, leaving him with a similarly glistening appendage. Then came a stripping of the other hand, and finally the face, leaving Andrew looking like a man-shaped jellyfish with gaping teeth and lidless eyeballs.
Mencken worked with the utter intensity of the engineer that he was. His faded t-shirt, stained jeans, and thinning, unkempt hair testified to his total disinterest in personal grooming, or any other activity not related to his fascination with creating interesting machines, particularly robots. And, of course, there was his deep interest in being rewarded for making them.
The de-fleshing of Andrew’s body done, Mencken pitched the last scraps of flaccid, beige artificial skin into the garbage and stood back. Squinting through his augmented-reality googles, he could see superimposed over Andrew’s body the squatter, more corpulent form that Andrew would be transformed into. He circled Andrew and scratched at his unruly, sparse beard that matched the long thinning hair that jutted in random directions from his scalp.
“Okay, he needs to be about five inches shorter,” said Mencken.
“Five inches shorter,” echoed his sallow-faced assistant Brandon, perched on a stool next to a cluttered workbench. Brandon wiggled his fingers in the air, typing on a virtual keyboard projected in front of him by his own augmented-reality googles. He poked the glasses up on his nose.
“And lots more electrogel. His owner was a porker.”
“Porker,” repeated Brandon, scribbling in midair on the virtual notepad, pursing thin lips in concentration.
“Fingers need to be shortened,” said Mencken.
“Shorter fingers.”
“If only they made this body style,” mused Mencken. “Or maybe if we could just buy a new frame.” But Mencken knew better. Helpers came in only a few standard sizes; none matching the pudgy, overweight android they were trying to create. Nobody wanted a fat Helper. And besides, buying a new Helper would draw attention, given that Helper sales were tracked. And the Russians didn’t like anything that would draw attention to their activities. So, he was resigned to buying parts stolen from the Helper factory and re-engineering the whole robot. Just as well. That’s how he made his money. That’s how he stayed alive.
“Hope we’ve got enough gel” noted Brandon. He hooked his tattered sneakers over the rungs of the stool and leaned forward to examine minutely the glistening glob that now was Andrew. He shook his head. “Man, that’s gonna take a lot. We don’t—”
A loud banging on the steel door of the warehouse made him jerk upright, eyes wide. Nobody came to the warehouse without an appointment.
Mencken moved quickly to pick up the control button that would detonate an array of shaped explosive charges strategically installed along the outside of the building to vaporize any enemy, people or vehicles that approached.
True, the building was nearly invulnerable. Mencken had armored its walls and roof with thick plates of super-hard ceramic. But he still wanted an explosive defensive capability. Given his highly illegal operations and his extremely dangerous client, he wanted an unequivocal deterrent. Just in case a detonation was necessary, he inserted the earplugs he kept in his pocket, and Brandon did the same.
But he wouldn’t need the earplugs this time. He recognized the visitor when he checked the security camera feed on his googles. He muttered a curse and issued a command for the massive door to unlock. The process took a minute. The blast-proof door was fastened with massive bolts that would stop just about any vehicle.
Finally the door swung open and Dimitri Kuznetov strode in, lean, swarthy, and scowling. He stopped and scanned the room as Mencken had seen him do so many times before. Mencken figured it was a protective habit, meant to detect attackers. Kuznetov had no doubt experienced many past attacks, as testified by the deep scar cleaving the thug’s chin and lower lip.
Mencken tried to shake off the deep dread he always felt when Dimitri appeared. He glanced at the spot on the wall where the photo of his mother and sister had hung—the photo that Kuznetov had taken after the first job he had done for the Russians. They’d asked him to create a mimic of a kidnapped bank clerk to rob a bank. The money was good; the engineering challenge interesting. And there was an element of payback for his being fired from the engineering department at Helpers, Inc.
But then, the Russians came up with the idea of re-engineering Helpers belonging to the super-rich to mimic their owners, and using the mimics to loot the owners’ fortunes. That’s when Kuznetov had given him a plastic box containing two eyeballs. He had gasped in horror, but from that moment on it was clear that if he ever stopped being indispensable, he would become completely dispensable. That’s when Kuznetov had taken the photo, grinning threateningly and saying that Mencken’s mother and his sister would be dispensable, as well. And so would Brandon’s mother, father, and brothers.
Kuznetov finished his scan of the room and asked “So?” in a voice roughened by drinking and smoking foul Russian cigarettes.
“Not finished analyzing,” said Mencken curtly, turning back to the glistening form of Andrew.
“Then finish. We need him in three days.” Dimitri’s thick Russian accent added an ominous note to the command.
“It’ll take a week. The whole body has to be reshaped.”
“Then you reshape fucking fast.” Dimitri leaned against the workbench, shrugging. “Tell you what. You do it in three days, we give you twenty percent more on your fee. And we don’t kill him.” He flipped his hand at Brandon, who flinched and slipped off the stool, wide-eyed, backing into a shelf, rattling the piles of electronic components.
“You can’t kill him. He’s got unique skills,” said Mencken, waving his hands in mid-air, as he manipulated the image of Landers.
“Skills!” echoed Brandon emphatically, his eyes darting back and forth from Mencken to Dimitri.
“Then we will si
mply cut off body parts that he can make do without.”
Brandon glanced nervously down at his body parts, trying to fathom which ones the Russian thug might mean.
“Quit fucking with him,” said Mencken coolly. “He needs all his parts, Dimitri. He is better at detailing secondskin-R than anybody. The skin’s realistic, but the detailing needs to be just as realistic.” Mencken regarded the 3D model of Landry floating before him. “How much is this guy worth, anyway?” Mencken had begun subtly trying to find out the names of the victims—facts he might need someday.
“None of your business.”
“That much, eh?”
“Your only business bottom line is you make perfect counterfeit robot. You tell me anything you need now, so no excuses.”
“Well, a couple of the fingerprints are smudged. Won’t transfer well. You still have the body?”
“We get new prints.”
“Do that. We’ll work ‘round the clock.”
“Good. Three days. Then we send him back in,” said Dimitri, smiling wolfishly at the nervous assistant. He turned to leave, then stopped and turned back.
“Do you have the reinforced model we want done?”
“Well, yeah, the basic mechanism.”
“Let me see it.”
Mencken gestured to Brandon to fetch the new model, and the assistant wheeled out a gurney holding the bare humanoid framework of a Helper. But this model was different, its structure much sturdier.
“It’s what Mikhail ordered. Defender features. We got hold of some blueprints.” He bent over the machine and pointed out the enhancements: “Stronger graphene alloy skeleton, high-tensile-strength muscle actuators, blast-proof vessel protecting the brain. And we’ll cover its structure with RheoArmor.”
“This armor stop anything?” asked Dimitri.
“Just about. Made of rheological fluid. They call it ‘smart fluid.’ It’s pliable until an impact. Then it instantly hardens to stop a knife, a bullet. This model’s meant to take punishment. And do damage.”
“That is the idea,” said Dimitri, smirking as he went out the door.
The humans did not notice that Andrew turned his head to regard with cold interest the new model.
• • •
As Patrick emerged from the elevator, he squinted against the blinding desert sun on the rooftop of The Haven. One of the co-op’s mech Helpers was gingerly skirting the pool, using a skimmer to scoop bits of debris off its surface. Patrick slipped on his sunglasses and smiled at the sight. The mech somewhat comically held the skimmer by its very tip and at arm’s length, staying as far from the water as it could. Even though its skin was plastic, the high-voltage batteries and electronic innards of Helpers didn’t function well when wet, thought Patrick. So, the Helpers must have an aversion to water programmed deep into their operating system.
He stripped off his tie and scanned the deck for Leah. He figured she would be up here. Sure enough, she lay on a chaise in the shade of a lanai, her virtual-reality googles on, staring into space. The googles had automatically darkened in response to the sunlight, so he couldn’t see her eyes, to figure whether she was reading or asleep. She was wearing a string bikini that reminded him why he found her so sexy. He relished a delicious memory of untying that bikini in the soft moonlight of a Caribbean evening and making love to her on the sand.
“Like some company?” he asked. He checked out the elaborate barbecue grill beneath the lanai, with its complement of grilling tools. “Hey, I could barbecue some nice ribs here.”
She turned her head toward him, but said nothing. He took the silence as grudging permission to keep company with her.
He continued. “Did you have a swim?”
“Yes,” she answered tersely.
“Reading?”
“I’m reviewing the cases in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.”
“Did you interview with them?”
“Got a job.”
“Wow! Fantastic! We should celebrate!”
She sat up on the chaise and drew up her legs, hugging her knees. “Well, it’s a contract job for now. Part-time.”
“Hey, with a Harvard Law degree, and your experience in New York, they’ve got to bump you up to a full-time prosecuting attorney.”
“Hope so.”
The Helper moved to a waste basket and emptied a mesh bag of pool debris. It then stepped to the roof railing and stood inertly in the hot sun, perhaps programmed to ensure that any moisture was evaporated.
“That pool looks nice. How far did you swim?
“A mile.”
“Anybody else come up here?”
“Well, I’ve been coming every day, and nobody has shown up yet.”
“Nobody at all, eh? Too tired to take a swim with me?” Without waiting, he stood up and stripped down to his boxers. He stepped to the side of the pool. “Never liked swimming in shorts,” he declared, stripping off the boxers and laying them beside the pool. He stepped to the edge and dived in, enjoying the perfect coolness of the water streaming sensuously past his heat-soaked body. He surfaced and began to swim quick laps, aware that she was trying not to watch him, but was. He knew she enjoyed watching his Navy-SEAL-hardened body as he exercised. At least she had at one time. On the turns he could see that at least her darkened googles were aimed at him. The mech backed away to the very edge of the roof, to avoid any stray splashes.
“It’s great!” he exclaimed, doing a backstroke for a couple of laps. She wouldn’t join him today, but at least she didn’t get up and leave. Maybe she would forgive him and join him soon.
“Jesus!” she exclaimed, breaking the mood.
“What?” He stopped swimming and stood up.
“The robot went over the side!”
He pulled himself out of the pool, to see her staring wide-eyed over the edge of the building, her googles cocked atop her head. Heedless of his wet nakedness, he joined her to see the Helper holding a squeegee in one hand, the other hand hanging precariously onto a windowsill. It proceeded to smoothly draw the squeegee back and forth, cleaning the window below it.
“Well, now we know what to expect when our windows get dirty,” he said, turning toward her. “That’ll be disconcerting!
She regarded him with an impassive expression he could not fathom and merely said “I got takeout for dinner.” She turned and padded away to gather her things and go back to the apartment.
• • •
Gregory Mencken stared into the transparent electrogel spray application booth, where stood the glistening form that had once been the Helper called Andrew.
“Got the input from the body scan?” he asked.
“Yup,” responded Brandon, standing at the control panel. On its screen floated the 3D image of the murdered Landers’ body, superimposed over the much slimmer profile of Andrew’s. The former Andrew was also shorter now. To match Landers’ height, they had replaced leg bones and spine. And they had sawed a few millimeters off each finger. Now, they would have to add considerable heft to Andrew’s frame. “Okay, start the application.”
Brandon jabbed a blue button, and former-Andrew began to rotate inside the chamber. He made no expression, not that he could have, for his face was now only a featureless gelatinous mask with eyeballs and teeth.
A faint hiss rose in the room, and four robotic arms began to play about former-Andrew’s body, spewing a fine mist of electrogel, which adhered to the existing surface, building it up. The robot arms maneuvered precisely over the body, like the appendages of the most skilled artist, depositing just the right measure of electrogel, according to the specifications dictated by the scan of the dead Landers’ rotund corpse.
For an hour, the robot arms continued their programmed sculpting, until a shrill tone signaled that the desired shape of Robert Landers had been achieved. By now, Mencken had sagged tiredly into a battered desk chair, nodding off, fatigued from nearly three days of solid toil. Brandon had curled up on a cot in the corner of the warehous
e, periodically raising his head and brushing back a mop of hair to peer blearily at the chamber.
“Open it up,” said Mencken, hauling himself wearily out of the chair.
Brandon hit a red button to purge the chamber of electrogel mist and pop open the door.
“Please exit the chamber,” Mencken instructed the former Andrew, now Landers. The android complied, his lidless eyes glancing down to avoid stumbling. Mencken inspected the fleshy android’s shimmering, translucent covering.
“Yeah, looks good,” he announced, bending over and picking at the gap between the robot’s toes. “Clean him up. I’ll get the skin.”
With a tired sigh, Brandon took up a razor knife and a scraper and began to meticulously excise stray bits of quivering gel from around the eyeballs and teeth. He would work his way down.
“Where’s his balls?” came Dimitri Kuznetov’s voice from near the door, making Brandon jerk and curse in surprise. The thug had slipped in unseen. Brandon averted his gaze instantly from the fearful figure, held up his hands to steady himself, and took a deep breath before going back to the delicate task.
“Dimitri, you’re early,” said Mencken, peeling a sheet of secondskin off a mold that had been robotically sculpted to mimic Landers’ body shape. He cursed himself for having forgotten to lock the door when he’d escaped the warehouse to get some fresh air. He’d installed a goddamned impenetrable door, and he’d not remembered to lock it! He was tired!
“This fuckin’ robot is worth much money to us. I wanted to make sure you were doing it right.”
“We always have.”
“I brought you new fingerprints,” said Kuznetov. “In fact, I brought fingers. So you have no excuse for them not being perfect.” He handed Mencken a plastic box. Mencken took it and placed it on a workbench, his jaw clenched in an attempt not to shudder. He’d not worked with severed human fingers before.
The Neuromorphs Page 3