He held his breath while the scan progressed. Ten percent . . . twenty percent . . . forty percent . . . eighty percent . . . done. He blew out his breath on seeing the result on the nearby display screen.
“Ninety-five percent accurate mimic!” he exclaimed. “That’s an excellent match between the body scan and the engineered Helper. Typically, we get eighty-five or so. So, we’ve got a Helper here that would fool his mother.”
“Have it perform,” said Fyodorov.
Mencken obliged, addressing the android. “Bob, how are you today?”
“Well, I could certainly use a fucking drink,” drawled the Landers android, waddling forward and striding around the warehouse, inspecting the cluttered shelves. The android scratched his genitals luxuriantly. “A drink and a hooker . . . and a cigar. Those would put me right, by God!”
Still watching the android, Fyodorov addressed Kuznetov. “The control link is still stable?” asked Fyodorov.
“Yes,” replied Dimitri. “Same as when you tested it.”
“Then send it off,” said Fyodorov, striding toward the door.
“Um . . . we shouldn’t quite yet,” said Mencken. “It still needs some sensor calibration. You wouldn’t want it crushing things or burning itself.”
“Then fucking finish it.” Fyodorov continued toward the door, then stopped and turned back to Dimitri. “After we’re done, keep it at the co-op until we’re sure we won’t need it. Then destroy it . . . completely. Data, too. I don’t want any trace of that motherfucker.”
Dimitri moved to follow his boss, but Mencken held up a hand. “I’ve also got to remind you again. Absolutely no water on these things. Remember, I couldn’t make secondskin-R water-resistant and still make it realistic.”
“Oh, it may get a little wet,” said Dimitri dismissively.
“Okay, look at this.” Mencken picked up a floppy spare flap of the secondskin, filled a pail with water and pitched it in. The secondskin began to bloat, swelling to float like a floppy sponge on the water’s surface. “Only clean the skin with alcohol.”
“You will fix that in future models,” said Dimitri, turning to leave. It was not a request, but a command.
After they were gone, Brandon returned from his retreat and sat down heavily on a stool, sweating, eyes wide.
Mencken allowed Brandon to recover his composure, directing the android into the sensor booth. There, the sensors for touch, pain, heat, and cold built into the android’s secondskin would be adjusted to send the right signal levels to the android’s nervous system. Next would come a training session in the sensory-teaching chamber, in which the android would be enveloped in a shroud that subjected its skin to sensory patterns, to adapt its neuromorphic brain to the new sensory input from the skin.
Soon it would be a perfect, functioning mimic of the super-rich Texas lawyer, which the Russians would employ as the perfect thief.
“That must be his official uniform,” whispered Patrick to Leah, as Lanny Malcolm approached wearing the same pin-striped suit and vest as when they had first met him at the interview.
They stood in the same conference room, beside the same rosewood table that before had held only their application papers. Now, however, the occasion was their welcoming party, and the table overflowed with a buffet of prime rib, poached salmon, caviar, and exotic cheeses. In a corner of the room, the white mech stood behind a bar in the corner, pouring champagne and mixing whatever exotic cocktail its residents wished.
“Good to see you again,” said Malcolm. “I hope your move was pleasant.”
“It went well,” said Leah, nodding and raising her champagne flute. “We’re just about settled. Some decorating to be done, but we’ll take our time.”
“Ah, good,” said Malcolm, gingerly taking his own flute of champagne from another of The Haven’s mech Helpers.
Anita Powell appeared from the small crowd of Haven residents, also wearing the same dark, high-necked silk dress she had before. She greeted them and began to lead them around the room, introducing them to co-op members they had not yet met.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve been meaning to ask you about the co-op policy on pets,” said Leah to Powell between introductions. “We had a cat in New York. We might like to get one now.”
“Pets?” asked Powell. “Our policy on pets?”
The room grew abruptly dead silent, each person seeming frozen for a moment. Then just as suddenly, the chatter resumed.
Powell resumed. “Our policy is like that of the guidelines of the New York Housing Authority, which limits pets to forty pounds when fully grown and includes fines for pet misbehavior, or a cleaning fee if a dog relieves itself in the common area or on the sidewalk in front of a building, which city laws require the co-op or condo to keep clean.”
“Okay,” said Leah, “I’ll—”
But Powell continued her curiously stilted recital. “Typically, pet-friendly buildings allow cats, dogs, fish, small caged birds and pet rodents such as hamsters or mice. Turtles may or may not be allowed because of salmonella concerns, and snapping turtles are generally barred.”
“Gotcha,” said Patrick, chuckling at the litany. “We’ll have no snapping turtles!”
Powell resumed her smile, standing with her champagne flute poised in front of her. Patrick and Leah gave each other quizzical looks and excused themselves to mingle.
“What was that about?” asked Leah.
“I guess there’s always one person in a co-op who memorizes the policy manual.”
They separated to circulate, with Patrick digging into the cold poached salmon and dill sauce. He chatted with fellow grazers, sipping champagne and inquiring about their backgrounds, their interests.
Leah wended her way to a clutch of women who appeared to be chatting about their careers and interests, as well. But she occasionally stole a furtive glance at her husband, judging whether he was being especially attentive to any of the women.
Then the tanned, slim John Travis appeared, and she made it a point to smile warmly and touch his arm, checking whether her husband might notice. She thought to herself, What’s sauce for the goose . . . , although she would never dream of proceeding beyond warm chatter and arm-touching. Even after what Patrick had done, she loved him so much. It made the pain he’d caused her that much worse.
After an hour, as people began to leave, Patrick and Leah made their way to the door, saying goodbye and thanking their new neighbors for the housewarming party.
“Interesting bunch,” said Patrick, as they walked away down the hall.
“Yeah, they all seem to be newcomers like us,” said Leah. “They’ve all come here from elsewhere in the country . . . and recently.”
“And they all seemed to be changing their lives . . . like they’re leaving old lives behind,” said Patrick. “I met an oncologist who didn’t want to talk medicine. I asked about the new cures for leukemia because, y’know, my nephew had it. But he didn’t want to discuss them; even didn’t seem to know about them.”
Patrick realized he still had his champagne flute in his hand. He turned back toward the conference room, waving at Leah to continue on. As he approached the doorway, something seemed off. The people inside were all standing absolutely still, as if frozen. But when he entered, they abruptly began to move and chat, as before. He nodded and smiled, handing the glass to a mech. The group nodded and smiled back.
As he retreated back down the hall, he felt the rise of some vague, indefinable disquiet.
• • •
Bob Landers strode into his investment banker’s paneled outer office, past another waiting client, and past the startled receptionist. Recognizing him, she pursed her lips in repressed annoyance and shook her head. Such rude intrusion was par for the course for the arrogant lawyer.
“John, I got serious business, today,” announced the android.
“Good to see you, Bob,” replied the trim, white-haired man in the vested suit, rising from behind the mahogany desk. “I don
’t recall that we had an appointment.”
“Fuck you, John, I don’t need an appointment. I’ve got so much fucking money with you, I should have you make an appointment to see me.”
The banker stiffened slightly, managing to calmly ask, “What can I do for you?”
“I’m tired.”
“Aren’t we all?”
“I mean I’m so fucking tired I’m leaving an ass track in the dirt.”
“And this has financial implications?”
“Yup. I’m getting out. Moving to Phoenix. Handing off my cases to other partners, letting them buy me out. Moving my investments to Phoenix, too. The whole fuckin’ shebang.”
The banker jerked slightly in surprise, calculating the effects of moving his client’s money. He took a deep breath to recover, then said, “We can transfer your accounts. We have offices in Phoenix. My colleague—”
“Not your firm. I’m transferring everything to a financial guy there.”
The investment banker’s mouth gaped in dismay. He sat down and spread his hands. “Bob, we’ve done extremely well by you. I mean look at the—”
Landers thrust an envelope at him. “Here’s the information you need . . . my new brokerage and bank account numbers . . . everything. Call them and coordinate the transfer.”
“That’s it? Bob, please reconsider. We can—”
“I will let you handle one major matter.”
John slumped in his chair, seeming to deflate at the prospect of losing some two hundred million dollars from his bank’s assets. He stared blankly at his desk, imagining the reaction of his partners to the loss.
“What can we do for you?” he asked dolefully.
“All my property in Houston. Sell it. You know the real estate people to use.”
“All of it?”
“Fuckin’ all. And I need access to my safety deposit box.”
“Uh . . . surely,” said John, still in shock, immersed in another bout of envisioning his dire professional fate. He called in his assistant, who would escort Landers to the vault.
Landers left John standing at his desk, his face pale, staring at the envelope in his hand. He was pondering the calls to make, the arrangements, the explanations, the excuses for losing the account.
Landers followed the assistant out into the bank’s vast marble lobby. The petite young woman’s high heels clicked along on the marble floor, and into the hallway that led to the vault. As she walked, she wrinkled her brow slightly. Something was off about Mr. Landers today. On past visits, he’d invariably made some suggestive remark about her clothes, her appearance. But today, he merely followed silently.
He did curse impatiently at the security station when asked to give a voice sample and fingerprints. But he only hmphed and stood still while the security camera performed face recognition, ear scanning, and iris scanning to confirm his identity. He then entered a small booth and requested his safety deposit box, which was automatically transported through the secure conveyor into the booth from somewhere deep in the bank vault.
Now alone, he opened the box, finding a stack of clear crystal computer datacubes the size of dice, each with a label.
A voice in his head said, “Please hold up each datacube so the label is visible.”
“Yes, Mikhail,” said Landers.
One by one, Landers held up the cubes to his right eye. Each time, the voice inside his head, said “Fine.” After a dozen cubes labeled with names of Congressmen, corporate heads, police chiefs, and high-level government bureaucrats, came one that caused the voice to command “Stop.”
Landers held the cube close to his eye. “Yes Mikhail.”
“Good. Take them all. Bring them to me in Phoenix.”
“Yes, Mikhail.”
Landers placed each datacube in his pocket, beginning with the one in his hand, the one labeled “Fyodorov.”
• • •
Garry glanced nervously over his shoulder, as he punched in commands to call up computer code he had no business seeing. True, he was nestled in his own little cubicle in the rabbit warren of the sprawling programmers’ floor of Helpers, Inc. But the cubicle had no door. And if another programmer, much less Blount, happened to see what he was doing, there would be questions and consequences.
He should be doing this at home, but he had no choice. Monday morning had sneaked up on him, and he still had questions to answer about how this mutant algorithm worked. But he had to be in the office.
The subroutines appeared on his cubicle’s wall-sized screen. He quickly donned his googles to transfer them to his virtual glasses, so he could more intimately explore the 3D network of the OS code that he was nearly sure Melvin Blount had written. Over the weekend, teasing apart strings of code, he had uncovered telltale hints of Blount’s coding style.
He felt safe analyzing the code, because he’d copied it untraceably to his own account, so there was no evidence that he was intruding into the main computer.
Another hour of exploring and . . . Yes! Now he was certain the parallel OS was Blount’s doing! Now for the smoking gun . . . or smoking code . . . or whatever. He probed deeper into the autonomy code within the OS. There, too, he found characteristics of past Blount-written programs.
Before any snoopers saw him, he took off his googles and brought up on the wall screen the sensory subroutine he was supposed to be working on. What to do next?
Should he tell the Vice President of Engineering? Terrible idea. He could be in on it, too.
Should he tell Helpers, Inc. CEO Gail Phillips? Nope, she might be in on it.
Should he call the FBI? That would be useless. He didn’t know what Blount was up to, much less what might be illegal.
He needed to think. Walking might help. He stood up to roam the narrow aisles of the expanse of cubicles, realizing that he was trapped in a maze just like the cubicle farm. He plotted a route that would pass by Blount’s office, with its floor-to-ceiling glass wall. There, he could see Blount’s array of camera monitors that had a view of the whole floor. Blount had often bragged that he liked the sense of control he felt from being able to see his minions at work at all times.
He passed a mech Helper on its way to some errand. He passed a male android that had been secondskinned to resemble a slim, elegant butler. Why were there no fat Helpers? He’d never had the courage to bring it up, but having realistic Helpers would make the androids easier for normal, plus-sized people like him to deal with.
He realized his next step when he remembered that he didn’t have a life. He had no girlfriend, no drinking buddies to occupy his time and energy. But he did have an almost pathologically obsessive curiosity. So, he was both free and motivated to follow this mystery wherever it led.
The next step would be to follow Blount wherever he went. But that probably wasn’t much of anywhere. Blount was probably like him, going straight home to some stark apartment with minimal furniture and nothing on the walls. But still there was the possibility that Blount’s after-work travels might tell him something.
It was like playing a virtie game, complete with strategic moves. Only now, he would have to navigate a real-life world where if he messed up something really, really bad could happen. He stopped near the break room and took a deep breath to marshal his courage. Hell, he could do this!
He returned to his cubicle, writing and testing code until just before he knew Blount would call it a day. He hurried to his car in the parking lot and eased it around to where he could see the space holding Blount’s electric.
Blount appeared on schedule, and he followed Blount home, winding through the sunbaked checkerboard Phoenix streets to a little house in an anonymous development of other cookie-cutter dwellings.
He did the same the following night, lurking until the lights in the house went out.
And the night after that.
This was becoming boring. He had an idea. The next day at lunch, he went to Gadget Barn, scanning the shelves of the surveillance section. He decided
to buy a GPS tracker/camera the size of a grain of sand. He could easily stick it on the front of Blount’s car and see where he was going from the comfort of his apartment. Then, if the destination looked suspicious, he could go there and check it out.
During a break the next day, when Blount was in a meeting, Garry sneaked out and stuck the camera on the front of Blount’s car. Back in his cubicle, he synced it to his googles and slipped them on, bringing up a view of the parking lot. Perfect! This was even more like a virtie game.
For three more nights, Garry watched Blount drive to his house. Then, Garry would sit in his chair playing virtie games in GameWorld, periodically checking to see if the car was still parked. It was still mostly boring. There were breaks in routine. Blount stopped in a bar one night for a couple of hours, and another night went to a movie.
But that was about it, so Garry instructed his troll to take over surveillance, notifying him only if Blount strayed from his routine. More nights went by, and finally, it was a Friday night. Garry decided to go to his usual ultra-high-speed linkbooth shop a mile from his condo, where he could immerse himself in the super-high-def Mirror World. Its games were far more realistic than the ones he could play from home.
Lounging in a chair in the small booth, he plugged his googles into the zetabit network and launched himself into the ultra-realistic 3D realm that mirrored the real world—with some extra, added bonuses. Besides harboring virtie versions of Earth’s real-life cities, Mirror World hosted virtie cities that faithfully replicated real-life cities.
Shortly, the “Welcome to Mirror World” logo materialized in 3D shimmering letters that oscillated from red to blue to green and all colors in between. And after a moment more, up popped his usual Mirror avatar, a muscular helmeted gladiator, hovering in the virtie darkness above the alluring multicolored lights of Mirror World spread out below. He swooped into his favorite arcade, housing his favorite game, Alien Universe. He transformed his avatar into the multi-armed reptilian Bigosian Warrior that was his game avatar.
The Neuromorphs Page 5