The Robots of Gotham

by Todd McAulty

  “What?”

  “You didn’t know? Charlotte was rich long before she met her husband. Very rich.”

  “How did she make her money?”

  “She’s something of a legend to old-school software developers. She was a software architect who made a breakthrough with a pre-Slater core AI right here in Chicago. Incredibly revolutionary at the time. She founded two companies. The second one was purchased by DeepHarbor Design, the company that created the first pre–Wallace Act machine intelligences. Back in 2066, I think.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. I think she retired after that. If the Wallace Act hadn’t outlawed AIs in the United States, her designs would likely still be in use. According to some folks, she privately funded overseas development of robots based on her designs for a decade after they became illegal in the US.”

  “Did she ever build any?”

  “No idea. Would be fascinating if she did, though, wouldn’t it? Imagine—a separate race of AIs, older and more advanced than the Slater code genome. I wonder what the Sentient Cathedral would make of that.”

  There was a chiming alert behind him, and he turned. I heard him curse under his breath.

  “That’s Stockholm. I gotta take care of this. See you at the ball.” He closed the door.

  That was interesting. So Charlotte Domeko had a hand in developing early machine intelligences right here in Chicago before the Wallace Act made her work illegal in the US. And now she was anxious to talk to me about the secret colony of robots living under the city? Curiouser and curiouser.

  I didn’t have to wonder for long. Domeko had reached out to me yesterday evening. I didn’t really have time to meet with her, but I figured she’d bought at least that much courtesy. We’d met briefly in the lobby, and it hadn’t been for small talk. She’d asked me bluntly what I knew about “our mutual underground friends.”

  I assumed that meant the Rajapakse robot colony. And donation or no donation, I wasn’t about to violate the trust the colony had placed in me so easily. I gave a noncommittal answer and waited for her next question.

  She eyed me warily. “Have we met before?” she asked. “You look familiar.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, trying to hide my impatience, and eager for this meeting to be over. “This is my first time in Chicago.”

  Mrs. Domeko was impatient as well. It was abundantly clear that there were many questions she wanted to ask me, but she was just as suspicious and unforthcoming as I was. In the end she stood up to leave, frustrated and annoyed. She stood at the entrance to the hotel, looking back at me with angry eyes.

  “Just tell me one thing,” she said. “Tell me you had nothing to do with this . . . this bloody mess. Tell me they’re safe.” Her voice quavered at the end, welling up with unexpected emotion.

  My resolve weakened. I had no idea what her connection to the colony was, whether she was friend or foe, but it was obvious she cared. Not knowing what had happened to them was affecting her deeply.

  Her eyes searched mine one last time. “Are they safe?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  She looked away, toward the dark clouds building over the lake. “I haven’t heard from them in four days,” she said. “Something terrible has happened.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “You were there,” Domeko said. It wasn’t a question.

  I nodded. “But I don’t know what happened. Not for sure.”

  “But you know something—”

  I glanced up at the cameras Zircon Border had taught me to avoid. We weren’t avoiding them now.

  “We can’t talk here,” I said in a low voice.

  She nodded, resigned. She stepped closer, gripping my hand. Her grip was like iron.

  She turned her back to the camera, whispered in my ear. “Can you help me find them?”

  I met her fierce gaze. “Yes,” I said, without hesitation.

  She nodded once, relief in her eyes. She squeezed my hand again, then released it.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I will . . . I will be in touch.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  I watched her leave the hotel, walking east, her bearing erect and formidable. She never looked back.

  There was no point in relaying any of this to Martin this morning. Especially since I wasn’t sure I understood it myself.

  “What’s the count?” Martin asked as I joined him.

  “A hundred and forty,” I said. “I got thirteen more RSVPs this morning.”

  “Nothing like the last minute.” He made a note on his tablet. “How many attendees does that give us?”

  “About half the attendees bought at least two tickets. I figure two hundred and fifty plates, to be safe.”

  “That’s a good number,” he said cheerfully. “That’s nearly fifty thousand at the till. The good people of Chicago must be starving for a decent social event. Good thing Mac ordered enough food.”

  The food had been one of the easy calls. Once we made the monetary commitment to Renkain, Mac had ordered the food immediately. The chef already had everything he needed for three hundred place settings. Assuming the power ever came back on.

  “Speaking of Mac, where is she?” asked Martin.

  “Getting dressed. She had her hair done this morning, and her dress arrived last night.”

  “She ordered a dress?”

  “I know. I didn’t even think about what I was going to wear until last night—did you? Thank God my traveling suit is clean.”

  “No, I didn’t. I was just going to throw a dinner jacket over this.” He spread his arms, displaying a button-down dress shirt and dark pants.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Good,” said Martin, looking relieved.

  “Are we all set with the music?”

  “Ready to go. Did a sound check this morning, but I won’t know for sure what it sounds like until the room starts to fill up.”

  “Okay. I have to go get ready,” I said. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  As I was waiting by the elevators, the doors opened and Dr. Lark stepped out. “There you are,” she said.

  “Tell me good news,” I said.

  “The kitchen has power again.”

  “Thank God.”

  “But the head chef says not to expect food until six-fifty at the earliest. Can you stall them until then?”

  “Yeah, I suppose. I can move up some of the speeches before dinner.”

  “We have another problem. The wine is here, but Nguyen won’t let us store it downstairs.”

  I stepped into the elevator, and Joy followed me. “Why the hell not?” I said.

  “I don’t know. He got nervous when he saw how many bottles there were, and how old they looked. He said something about insurance.”

  Insurance. That was funny. Like anyone would sell us insurance in a war zone.

  Mac had purchased several hundred bottles of wine with some of Domeko’s money. According to her, the market for fine vintages had collapsed during the war, and she knew several sellers looking to unload sizable private collections. It seemed like a sound investment—we could sell the wine during dinner for a hell of a lot more than we paid for it. “One good thing about the fractured municipal government in Chicago,” Mac had said with a smile. “At least we don’t need to worry about a liquor license.”

  “I’ll go down and talk to Nguyen in a few minutes,” I told Joy.

  “We need an answer now. The team that trucked in the wine has another delivery.”

  “Damn it. Fine. Have them bring everything up to the ballroom. Stock it behind the bar.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes. We can auction off any bottles we don’t sell, and that’ll be easier if they’re right there.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  I returned to my room and got dressed. There were several urgent messages waiting for me from the kitchen, and one from Nguyen. By the time I deal
t with everything, it was time to get to the ballroom and start welcoming my guests.

  I got there just before five, in time to supervise the last of the setup. Joy had things well under control. Hundreds of bottles of wine—including some very expensive vintages, still covered in a thin layer of dust—were stacked on tables behind the two bars we’d set up. It actually made a very impressive display, and I complimented Joy on her work.

  In fact, other than the kitchen delays, everything was more or less going according to plan. We opened the doors at 5:30, and within minutes I was busy shaking hands with the first arrivals.

  The room began to fill. At 5:45 the mayor and her wife arrived, with a small retinue, and she greeted me warmly. In the thirty seconds or so that we spoke, she displayed a thorough understanding of who I was, where I’d come from, and what we’d done to pull this off. I don’t know who’d briefed her before she arrived, but they’d done a great job.

  Mac showed up just before 6:00, breezing into the room on the arm of one of the guests. Her hair was up, with just a few ringlets teased out to dress her shoulders. She broke away long enough to come over and kiss my cheek.

  “Stop,” I said. I took a step backward and signaled her to turn around.

  She obeyed, twirling in place with a smile. The dress was light blue, with a lace bodice. Her back was exposed all the way down to the small of her back, except for a thin strap at her shoulder. The dress flared around her ankles, but somehow simultaneously clung to her hips, showing off her figure.

  “Oh my God,” I said appreciatively.

  Her smile widened. She came close enough to whisper in my ear. “I almost called you for help getting into this thing. You have no idea.”

  “The effort was worth it, believe me.”

  She ran a hand over her skirt, and the fabric subtly altered the way it flowed as she did. “The dress has eleven magnetic controllers and more memory than my phone. I had to reboot it twice just to get it to lay right.”

  “Who’s your date?” I glanced over at the gentleman waiting patiently a few feet away. He was watching me a little suspiciously, truth be told.

  “Roger Burbank. He picked me up in the lobby.”

  “Listen, Mac . . .” I held her hand firmly, just as she began to pull away. She turned back to me, her eyes curious.

  “Yes?”

  “I want to talk,” I said. “Are you free for breakfast tomorrow?”

  “I’d like that. Why don’t I come by your room?”

  “Perfect.”

  She stepped a little closer. “What did you want to talk about?”

  I had decided that I was long overdue to talk to Mac about her son Anthony, and our plan to search for him. Yes, there were still risks involved in introducing her to Black Winter and potentially exposing how we’d used the drone search algorithm in the past. But I knew now that I owed it to her. She was an extraordinary woman, and helping her was worth the risk.

  “About . . . a lot of things,” I said. “About what happened that night you were drunk. And what we talked about in the lobby the next morning. About that time you bought me lunch. About all the times you’ve been kind to me, as a matter of fact. I’ve been thinking about it, and I want to talk about how I can pay you back.”

  Her hand felt very warm in mine. She made no effort to pull away again. “Is that all?” she asked.

  I smiled. “No,” I said. “As a matter of fact, that’s not all.”

  She leaned in close again, close enough to whisper. “Good,” she said.

  Roger coughed, but Mac didn’t pull away immediately. I glanced at her impeccably dressed date as he waited impatiently. “You be good tonight,” I said.

  “Depends how rich he is,” she whispered, giving me one last secret smile before rejoining Roger.

  I spent the next half hour mingling. As stressful as the last forty-eight hours had been, it was still invigorating to meet so many smiling faces and shake so many hands.

  Everyone wanted to talk to me. And not too surprisingly, most of them wanted something. Sometimes it was just to express their admiration and thanks. Those people were like a balm. Sometimes they had questions—pretty tough questions—about the occupation.

  “How long before we become part of the presidential republic of Venezuela?” Pete Monken, an attorney with Toma and Nassar, asked me point-blank barely fifteen seconds after we’d been introduced. He stood with arms crossed beside the table where he’d just seated his date, a handsome young man at least twenty years younger than him.

  The question drew the immediate attention of everyone at the surrounding tables. The buzz of conversation died around us. Those who were seated stood up or turned to face us in their chairs, and those who were already standing took a few steps closer, trying to be casual, until we were in a tight circle of curious, concerned faces.

  “I don’t think that’s inevitable,” I said cautiously. “It all depends on the negotiations in Clarksville.”

  “That’s bull,” said a slender woman in an evening gown to my right. She was in her early sixties and so thin she looked almost anorexic. “The AGRT’s been steadily consolidating their hold on Sector Eleven since the Armistice.”

  There were murmurs of agreement around the circle. People were nodding, and more faces turned sour. Everyone turned to me expectantly.

  The thing in these situations is not to get tricked into speaking for the AGRT. Do it once or twice, and pretty soon everyone assumes you’re just a mouthpiece for the occupation. Of course, that’s much harder to avoid when the questions are so idiotic.

  “I think you’re looking at this entirely the wrong way,” I said. “You want to know what sectors the Venezuelans plan to keep? Look for the ones they’re investing in. They’re building a state-of-the-art robotics line in Buffalo and high-speed rail into Louisville. That says they’re in no hurry to return those to the States. But Sector Eleven . . . we’ve been starved for infrastructure improvements since the war ended. To me, that says we’re first on the block for a trade.”

  “I don’t believe that,” said the woman. “The Civil Commission has ignored almost every request we’ve made for meaningful business development.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “And you can either believe that Venezuela is neglecting Sector Eleven or that it’s anxious to keep it. But not both.”

  Monken cut through the buzz of conversation that immediately arose when I finished speaking. “What do you believe?” he asked me.

  “I believe Sector Eleven is a lot more valuable to both sides if it’s prosperous. Look at us,” I said, spreading my arms and turning around to look at all the people surrounding me. “We’re all hoping that the negotiators in Clarksville demand the return of Chicago. But the American delegation is negotiating on behalf of a broken country, and a broken country has no use for a broken city. We want Chicago to be valued again? Then we need to make it valuable. Us. You and me. The people in this room. It’s on us.”

  I moved from table to table over the next thirty minutes, getting introduced to a lot of movers and shakers and clasping a lot of hands. I was still chatting with a group of investors from the Mercantile Exchange, getting an earful on the failures of the AGRT to endorse any kind of stable monetary exchange policy, when I spotted Martin waving at me. I made my excuses and worked my way over to his side.

  “You made friends fast,” he said with a grin.

  “I don’t understand why any of these people care what I think. I’ve barely been in this city a month.”

  “Because you’re in with the Venezuelans. And, frankly, you speak like an American. You’re someone they can trust, you see what’s going on, and you speak plainly. To this crowd, that’s about as sexy as it gets.”

  “If I’d known that, I would have thrown a ball as soon as I got here. Everything set?”

  “Yup. Music is queued up and ready to go.”

  “You got the spotlight I asked for?”

  “Yes. I’ll wait for your signal,
and then dim the overhead lights and shine the spotlight on the podium. Who’s up first?”

  “Me. I have a few opening remarks; then I introduce Renkain. And then the mayor.”

  Martin glanced at his watch. “We’re running a little late.”

  “Yeah, but it’s okay. Look at this crowd. People are having a great time.”

  It seemed strange, but it was true. People had found their assigned seats, placing jackets and scarves on the back of chairs, but almost no one was sitting down. They were mingling, talking, laughing. Over by the doors, more people were arriving; men in tuxedos, women in designer gowns. I saw more than a few Venezuelan officers in uniform mingling with the crowd—including one of my favorite people, the always delightful Capitán Leon.

  Perhaps Martin had been right. The good people of Chicago, as decimated as they were, were starving for a decent social event. Especially one where they could come face-to-face with their occupiers in what passed for a friendly setting. Businessmen, politicians, philanthropists, and the curious rich—they all crossed that threshold with a searching look, anxious to put a human face to the enemy in their midst, perhaps to put some of their worst fears to rest. And maybe to come away with a phone number, a contact, a name in the new regime. Someone in power they could partner with, appeal to, bribe or seduce in all the usual ways, to help convince them that their once-great city might one day return to normal.

  This I understood. These men and women, they were my customers. They had paid $195 for a plate of lamp-warmed chicken so that I could introduce them to the new regime. I knew exactly what was expected of me, and I was anxious to deliver.

  But not so anxious that I couldn’t recognize a good thing when it was right in front of me. “Let’s let them mingle for another fifteen minutes before we get started,” I said. “Give the kitchen time to get everything ready.”

  “Roger that,” said Martin.

  I made my way back into the crowd, introducing myself to some of the new arrivals. From across the ballroom Mac flashed me a smile, and then returned to her conversation. She was talking to one of the mayor’s party, possibly the secretary of civil defense. I lost sight of her as more people arrived and began to mingle.