Mothership Zeta issue 1, volume 1

by Escape Artists, Inc.

  Harry just hoped they hadn’t dropped it on his key lead.

  “Is anyone at home?” he said, approaching the greenery.

  “Why don’t you come on in?” called a willowy voice from the leaves.

  And what’ll happen to me in there? Perhaps that was where Mr. X had met his... eventuality. “I’d rather not, seeing as how I’m here about a possible murder.”

  “A what?” asked Widow Weinsawks, emerging. Her wrinkled skin looked leathery—or papery. With what could be called a light-greenish hue, the color of money. She was so rich she was practically made of the stuff, and it showed.

  “I’m here about a dead man.”

  “That’s right, my husband’s passed. Poor dear, missed being immortal by two days, you know.”

  “That’s not who—I mean a recent permanently—never mind.” Perhaps he shouldn’t go throwing words like permanent around. If anyone caught on to the true gravity of this investigation there could be panic. “The records office said you obtained a license to hand out socks and wellness checkups to the destitute a few days ago.”

  “Yes. I also asked to hand out work permits, but they said most of the homeless had been that way for less than a decade. I shouldn’t go robbing them of the complete experience, they said.”

  Harry asked Mrs. Weinsawks all of the requisite questions, trying to gauge if she might have had anything to do with Mr. X’s drainage problem. She seemed on the verge of drying up herself.

  “For the wellness checkup, you had a few doctors come out, I presume?”

  “Just the one. He was very good. Wonderful, uh...” Her watery eyes went a little dreamy for a minute.

  “Bedside manner?” he offered.

  “It was in the bed, mostly,” she said happily.

  Harry squashed that mental picture like a ten-weeks-at-the-bottom-of-the-bin tomato. “How’d he get through all the patients?”

  “Medical bots.”

  “Robots, really?”

  “Interesting ones, too. Very personable. I’ve never seen personableness in a bot.”

  Harry made a note.

  “Mr. X was quite chatty, you said?”

  “Yes, spoke at length with almost everyone. Quite eloquently, too. And not as shriveled as in that picture you’ve got there.”

  “Could you get me a list of everyone in attendance, please?”

  As she left to get the records from Ms. Pots, Harry’s bio-phone rang. He plugged his nose and popped his ears. “Yes?” he answered in a nasal-squeak.

  It was the M.E. “I’ve got another one—dead body that won’t stop it, I mean. Seems to be in the same condition as Mr. X. And she is also obligatorily without roof. A Ms. Gonndand. She has the twin punctures and bruising, too. And their bodies were indeed drained of blood. To the point where the imma-virus couldn’t regenerate itself, let alone their cells—I mean, we’re talking dry. Dry. Dry as the eczema on my hoo-ha. Do you know how fast someone would have to bleed out for that? And there’s definitely no arterial severage.”

  Mrs. Weinsawks returned with the list. Ms. Gonndand was on it.

  “Looks like it’s time to pay Doctor—” he scanned the paper. “Agony. really?—pay Dr. Agony a visit,” said Harry.

  “You think it’s easy being a doctor this epoch?” asked Dr. Agony. “All people were worried about before immortality came along was dying. As long as they couldn’t feel themselves dying they didn’t care what they did to their bodies. Now they’re actually afraid of having to live with the ugly skin blotches, or losing their memory to too much drink, or forgetting where they left their severed hand now that a new one has grown back. Easy? Please!”

  The doctor was a young man who looked barely of age. When immortality struck it stuck, no matter where you were on life’s bell curve. There were quite a lot of parents ticked off about having to change diapers for all eternity, but their rage was nothing compared to that of the gawky fifteen-years-olds who had been looking forward to waving at adolescence in the rearview mirror.

  Most criminals Harry had encountered were people who’d never come to terms with having pimples from now until the apocalypse.

  “You examined the individuals’ reflexes?” asked Harry.

  “My reflex-robot did.”

  “So, you examined their respiratory systems, then?”

  “My breath-bot did.”

  “Their circulatory systems?”

  “My heart-bot.”

  Harry scratched his chin. “What exactly did you do at the vineyard? Wait, never mind. I know the answer.” Mrs. Weinsawks. Maybe the good doctor had a mind-scrubbing-bot.

  There was a knock at the doctor’s door. Much to Harry’s surprise, in flapped an orange and purple sea-turtle thing about the size of a cat. “What the hell is that?”

  “I am a cardiovascular monitoring unit,” it said. “May I give you a hug?”

  “My heart-bot,” the doctor clarified.

  “It talks.”

  “May I give you a hug?”

  “Yes. And it has a personality and everything. Sentient.”

  “That’s illegal. AI was invented post imma-virus and was banned in the US.” Harry knew. He’d worked on some of the first prototypes back in his programming days. He’d even based some of the test-personalities on his friends and family members.

  “Hug me!”

  “Oh, come now, Detective, most people know the all-stop was ridiculous. We’re not allowed to pass any new laws, that’s the only reason it doesn’t change. My bots improve lives.”

  “Your own, you mean? They go do your job while you scamper off with the widow of the week?”

  “They’re not always widows. Don’t look at me like that. It’s murder having an eighteen-year-old’s libido for nine hundred years!”

  “You know what else is murder? Murder.”

  “What?”

  “Hug me!”

  Harry was about to give Agony the whole spiel, but the heart-bot had flopped over to his feet and was flailing around like an excited puppy. “Why does it keep saying that?”

  “That’s how it examines your system.”

  “Hug me!”

  “If I do will it go away?”

  “Yes.”

  Reluctantly, Harry scooped the bot into his arms. It was squishy, like a stuffed toy. It wrapped its flippers around his chest and squeezed. “Hmmmm!” it sighed happily, then after a moment, “Beats per minute: seventy-two. Blood pressure: one-forty-seven over ninety-three.”

  “I have stage one hypertension,” Harry explained defensively. Helen usually helped him with his de-stressing exercises. He hadn’t once remembered to do them since she’d left.

  “At least your heart is full of love and sprinkles,” it said soothingly. “Actually, sprinkles are bad for you.”

  Helen helped him eat right, too.

  “Thank you. I’ll keep that in mind.” He unceremoniously dropped the bot on the floor and it waddled out of the room. “Where was I? Oh, murder. When you were at the Weinsawks’ estate, did any of the homeless threaten to expose your AIs?”

  “A few individuals did make comments about them, yes. Several people had been politicians before getting their homeless calls.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  The doctor locked his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his swivel-chair. “Look, if I was worried about getting arrested for the AIs, do you think I’d let one in here with you? And why are you asking me things? If someone was murdered, you should ask him about it.”

  “Ah-ha! So you know the victim was a man.”

  “I could just as easily have said ‘her.’”

  “So you know the second victim was a woman.”

  “You never said there were two murders,” protested Dr. Agony. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”
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  “I ask the questions and you give me a close amalgamation of the truth. That’s how this works.” He’d watched some old detective movies just to be sure. After all, he’d never had to question people without the benefit of an eye-witness before. “Did you take any blood samples while at the vineyard?”

  “My—”

  “—blood-bot did,” Harry finished. “How much did it take?”

  “Teaspoons and teaspoons. Oh, the horror,” came the answer.

  “Don’t give me any lip. What did it do with the blood?”

  “Processed it. Ran tests, assessed health. Everyone there was mostly fine. A bit malnourished, but Mrs. Weinsawks didn’t have permission to give them food.”

  “No one had any bleeding problems? No one leaked?”

  “Incontinence typically doesn’t apply to veins.”

  “Samples were taken from the inner elbow, I presume?”

  The doctor huffed. “Yes, yes. Really, detective, we’re inching along here. How exactly did these people die? They bled out? That’s an easy fix—not like re-growing a head or anything—they should be revived by now. Stop bugging me and my bots, and go get your answers.”

  “Just show me the damn blood-bot.”

  With an air of superiority that only teenagers can display without endless practice, the doctor led the detective out of the office, through the hospital’s glaring white halls, and into a rather large supply closet. One shelf looked like it had been teleported from a toy store. Animal-reminiscent bots sat in a row, perfectly still until the two men approached. Then their heads all swiveled in one direction.

  The heart-bot was there, curled up against a bot that looked like a stack of tin cans—it was definitely more robotic in appearance than the rest.

  “Heart-bot and blood-bot like to stay close,” said Dr. Agony.

  “Hemoglobins stick together,” said heart-bot.

  “Just a bite?” said blood-bot, opening its wide mouth to reveal one long needle-tooth.

  “Oh, that’s comforting,” said Harry sardonically. “I’m sure this one’s big with the kiddies.”

  “He reminds them of the The Wizard of Oz, thank you,” said the doc.

  “So would munchkins and Glenda the Good Witch, but I still wouldn’t like them coming at me with a giant needle.”

  “He takes minimal samples—the vials are only so big, you know. If you don’t believe me, let him test you.”

  “Just a bite?” said the bot with a wide grin.

  Harry stilled himself. This was what old-time detectives did to solve a case. They went with the nitty-gritty. They got down and dirty. They put out or got shut out (or was that some other profession?).

  He rolled up his sleeve and approached the needle.

  “Oh, goody,” said the bot.

  Then Harry remembered the movies and hesitated. “If you want this thing to chomp down on me, you go first.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” whined the doctor. “You’re not my dad.”

  “Just do it, or so help me I will take your AIs away.”

  The doctor seemed on the verge of tears. “How come the law never lets me do what I want?” He stuck out his arm and the blood-bot bit down. A split second and it was over. The bot said, “Yum!” A drawer in its chest opened and the spent needle dropped out as another slid into place.

  “That was quick,” Harry noted.

  “Super suction. Don’t have to wait for the heart to pump it through.”

  Satisfied that Agony wasn’t trying to pull the well-processed sheep’s hair over his eyes, Harry offered up his veins. “Bleh! I mean, yum,” said the bot.

  Harry noted the bot had a slight accent, something Eastern European, but he couldn’t place it.

  After several minutes, a bruise developed around the single pin-prick on Harry’s arm. One needle, one wound—not the double-puncture the M.E. had pointed out. When neither he nor the doctor showed any signs of spontaneous exsanguination, Harry decided the lead was a bust. Better to pick up tomorrow with other recipients of the widow’s government-regulated charity.

  Going home was painful. Not just because his gum-shoes stuck to the sidewalk and he had to jerk them free, but because every corner of the house reminded him of Helen.

  Here was the front door where he’d banged her head into the jamb carrying her over the threshold after their tenth wedding (since ‘death do us part’ no longer applied, the government had stipulated that the legal length of a marriage was seventy-five years). There was the kitchen table where he used to pretend to eat her cooking every night. Back there was the dryer where she’d shrunk every shirt he’d ever bought. And here, on the couch, was where she’d pretend to fall asleep at night to avoid his clumsy attempts at love making (“Seven hundred and eighty years of marriage and you still don’t know how the parts go together, Harold?”).

  She was something else, alright. But she’d been his something else.

  And their marriage would legally end in a year. If they weren’t together to renew, would she look for someone else?

  Maybe that was why the government had assigned her to Alaska. Surely if people got tired of their careers, people got tired of their spouses. Best to alleviate their boredom, whether they asked for it or not.

  Harry had just settled in for his nightly date with a bag of cheese puffs and a six pack of Whine-Coolers (“Irritated? Fussy? Just suck on Whine-Coolers. The best adult pacifiers since 2316!”), when he heard a bump at the front door.

  “Damn kid pitching baseballs at my house again.” He stomped over to the door and yanked it open, ready to give the neighbor boy a piece of whatever internal organ he hadn’t tried yet (mind, liver, and spleen had all failed).

  Instead of a ball, an arm-full of tin came flying at him, shrieking, “Bleh, bleh, bleh!”

  Acting on impulse, Harry threw the blood-bot over his head. The thing landed on the couch.

  “Bleh, bleh. I vant to suck your blood!” it called, righting itself.

  “Mission accomplished. You did that this afternoon.”

  “But I vant all of your blood.”

  “How? Your vials can’t hold it.”

  “No vials installed. I can suck all I vant. It does, unfortunately, eh, fall out. I must get that fixed.”

  Harry took up a fighting stance, ready for the bot to pounce again. The robot’s accent tickled his memory. “Where were you manufactured?”

  The bot opened a panel on its belly and pointed to a raised stamp.

  “Made in Transylvania,” Harry read. “Property of the Government of Romania. If found, please call four-zero—wait! You’re government property?”

  “Experimental medical equipment,” it said proudly.

  “You’re stolen, then?”

  “I beg your pardon. No one steals the Prince of Darkness, Master of the Night, Ruler of the Undead. I escaped.”

  “Excuse me, you’re who?”

  The bot stood, all foot-and-a-half of him, tall and proud. It moved an arm in front of its face, then swept it aside dramatically. That’s when Harry noticed it was wearing a cape. “I am Dracula!”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Sure I am,” it said imploringly, shaking a corner of the cape. “I come from Transylvania, I drink blood, I roam at night, and I vear a dark cloak. All my friends look like animals, so I vill probably turn into a bat one of these days. See? I must be Dracula.”

  “You conclude you’re Dracula? You don’t know it?”

  “I had no idea whom I vas until I saw an old movie a few veeks ago. I had not been installed with a personality, you know. I vas blank. But then I saw this master of the underverse sucking blood and it all fit. Found myself a dealer on the—vhat’s the term?—down-low, and he gave me a real nice personality to go vith my new understanding.”

  “Did he, now?�
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  “Yes, makes me all jumpy if I don’t get a blood fix.”

  “You downloaded an addict’s personality?”

  The bot vibrated eagerly, “Of course. That’s vhen I realized my true purpose.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’m supposed to be a vampire-maker, not a medical-sampler. Undead is my business.”

  “I hate to tell you, then, but you aren’t making anybody undead. Just dead. People already come back to life just fine on their own.”

  The bot considered this for a moment, fist under chin. “That’s a shame. Ah vell, must keep on, though. Digital-imperative and all, you know how it is.”

  It lunged at him.

  Damn imported crap! Yet another reason to buy domestic.

  Harry didn’t have a gun. He never carried one. What was the use of shooting a perp if he just kept on going? Wouldn’t have worked on the bot, anyway. But if the thing thought it was a vampire, would it respond to classic vampire remedies?

  When the robot jumped, Harry bent backwards like he was dodging a bullet in slow-mo. Gravity didn’t agree with the tactic and dropped him on his ass. No surprise; he and gravity hadn’t gotten along for years.

  The evasive maneuver, though it lacked finesse, was successful. The bot went barreling into a curio cabinet and Harry scrambled toward the kitchen.

  Harry lunged at the spice rack on the counter. His fingers found a shaker and spun the lid off. In one swift pirouette, he turned and tossed the bottle’s contents at the robot.

  A flurry of pale-yellow powder rained down on the tin body. The blood-bot stopped, its hands raised above its head in a menacing fashion. It briefly inspected its dusted exterior.

  “Vhat in hell vas that?”

  “Garlic powder.”

  It dusted itself off. “I know it is easy to miss, but I am a vampire robot. Quite the upgrade from the fleshy model, vouldn’t you say?”

  “So one of my vegetable skewers through the heart-drive won’t help?”

  “Oh, it vould help immensely. Anything to inch your arm that much closer.”

  Great. Now the bloodsucker was between him and the front door, and Harry had his back against the counter top.