Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014: A Tor.Com Original

by Various Authors

  So I decided to start the car and pull out from the curb, the matchbook in my hand and the brown packet on the passenger seat, my destination Dabney’s Bar and Oyster Club, Hollywood, California.

  * * *

  I parked out on the main street. No need to be secretive. I was just a robot out minding his own business, which in this case was walking down the street to a bar to see if I could find a man with a thin weasel face and a high-pitched voice.

  I passed a newsstand on the corner and crossed at a big intersection. People were looking at me, some even pointing, but that was fine, no problem. People knew about robots and some people even remembered them.

  Robits.

  I stopped on the other side of the street, outside a grocery store. I thought about the man’s voice and the way he said “robits” like it was another word entirely.

  It was hot afternoon and two kids came out of the grocery store with ice cream cones in their hands. They stopped by their bikes and watched me, their treats melting over their knuckles. I looked at them and the three of us stood there playing statues until the pay phone at the curb behind me rang.

  I stopped looking at the kids and walked over to the phone. I knew the call was for me even before I lifted the receiver.

  “Taking a break, Ray?” asked Googol inside my head. The phone’s receiver buzzed uselessly in my ear, so I ignored it.

  “What did you say about telephones, Googol?”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” she said, and then she laughed like the twenty-a-day smoker she was programmed to sound like. I had the image again of long legs dangling over the balcony on a smoky Indian summer years ago. “Can’t have a big fella like you standing in the street, whispering sweet nothings to yourself. People will talk.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So what’s the story?”

  If I could have huffed I would have, so instead I simulated it like the good Professor had programmed. I turned back around to the grocery store, leaning back into the phone booth. The two kids had moved on, but now the store’s proprietor was watching me from the doorway, arms folded over his white apron.

  “Free country,” I said. I flipped the matchbook through the fingers of my other hand.

  “In God we trust.”

  “Don’t tell me, you called to say you’ve found religion?”

  “No,” said Googol, and she laughed. “I read that somewhere.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, little piece of paper. Green. Rectangular. Had a President’s face on it too.”

  “I get it.”

  “Seems people will give you all these little pieces of paper if you do stuff for them.”

  “No kidding.”

  “It’s true. Things like watching a house.”

  “I’ll head back there in a minute. I just need to run an errand.”

  If I could have frowned, I would have. It was a lie, and an obvious one. Googol knew how I worked. I never ran out of cigarettes or needed a coffee and a donut.

  When Googol spoke inside my head her tone hadn’t changed. If she’d noticed anything, she hid it well.

  “You’re the Chief, Chief,” she said. “Call in when you see something.”

  “I sure will,” I said. I replaced the dead receiver on the telephone and nodded to the grocer standing in the doorway of his shop. His face broke into a smile like he was giving away his daughter at the wedding of the century, and he waved at me before refolding his arms tight.

  I held up the matchbook so I could take a good look, and the grocer saw me and he nodded. “Looking for something?” he called.

  I walked the short distance from the phone booth on the curb to the storefront and held the matchbook out for him to look. He didn’t unfold his arms, but he leaned forward to peer at it.

  “What, robots like oysters now? You learn something new every day.”

  I pocketed the matchbook. “No, I’m a private eye. I’m looking for a guy in a hat.”

  “Who likes oysters?”

  “Could be that he does.”

  The grocer unfolded one hand to point down the street, in the direction I’d been heading. “Block and a half. Can’t miss it. I don’t go there myself. Lucy’s down on Helen Street is a lot better. Bad sort in Dabney’s.” Then he nodded at me again. I was six feet six inches tall and stood nearly a foot taller than the grocer. “But you look like a guy who can handle himself,” he said. The smile came back.

  I tipped my hat and walked down the street.

  * * *

  The grocer was right. Despite the fancy name, Dabney’s was a dive bar. At four in the afternoon it was dark and smoky inside. The floor was as sticky as flypaper and the orange-shaded lights that hovered over each table were real low, illuminating only the center of each round tabletop, leaving the patrons seated around to discuss their vices in shadowed privacy.

  At the end of the bar was a stack of matchbooks, all magenta and yellow and crease-free. The barman raised an eyebrow at me as I leaned on the bar.

  “I’m fresh out of motor oil, buddy,” he said. He was sticky like the floor and the apron around his waist was nothing like as white as the grocer’s had been.

  “I’m looking for someone,” I said, and the barman shook his head.

  “Bad for business, tin man.”

  As if to illustrate his point, two gentlemen rose from a nearby table and slipped towards the door. They looked at me as they walked past and when they each pulled down the brim of their hats it wasn’t in friendly greeting.

  But neither of them were the thin man I was looking for, so I turned back to the barman.

  “No problem,” I said. Then I remembered the brown packet in my pocket. I reached in and, without taking it out, broke one of the paper bands holding the money together so I could slide a note out. I pulled it out of my coat like I was performing a magic trick, and the barman’s eyes lit up like he was watching one. I folded the note between two steel fingers and laid it on the bar.

  The barman palmed the note and nodded. “Be my guest,” he said, and he walked away. Seemed a hundred dollar tip bought a lot of cooperation in a place like this.

  I leaned back on the bar and scanned the room. I turned the brightness in my camera eyes up to compensate for the darkness, and the orange lampshades all flared into one bright white mass in the top half of my vision. Which was no problem, because I could see everyone now.

  At the back of the room, a thin man with a weasel face looked worried, then he gestured sideways with his head before standing and heading out a door at the back of the room.

  I counted to ten and followed. Some people watched me. Some people didn’t.

  * * *

  The back door led to a hallway and the hallway led to another door which let out onto the alley at the rear of Dabney’s. It smelled of rotting vegetables and was full of garbage and wet cardboard. The thin man was standing there pacing in tight circles. He looked up when he saw me, then looked over his shoulder. But we were alone. The alley was empty but for me and him.

  “What are you doing, following me around?” said the man. I remembered his voice well. The way his bottom lip was always wet and quivered, the way his fingers flickered like they were trying to get cigarette ash off of them all the time.

  It would have taken too long for me to explain how my memory banks worked, so I decided on the direct approach and hoped he wouldn’t ask too many questions. I was here to ask them, not answer them.

  Then he took a step forward and looked at me sideways. “Was it the dough?” he asked, then raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Because look, I just pass on the package and don’t ask no questions. You knows that.”

  I still hadn’t said anything, and then he shrugged again.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m just the finger man. I work for a lot of people. Point out things, right? Give people a little push in the right direction.” At this, he put his hands out and mimed pushing somebody. Whether it was down the street or in front of a bus, I
couldn’t tell.

  Then he said: “Look, you can’t come complaining to me. Take it up with your boss, y’know. What’s her name?”

  I said nothing. He clicked his fingers.

  “Diane.” He looked at the ground. “No.” He clicked his fingers again. “Googol! Nice gal. Love her voice. I bet she can keep it going all night, right?” He smiled and pointed an elbow in my direction. I stood and didn’t say anything and the elbow dropped along with his face.

  “Hey,” he said. “I don’t get paid for this.” And he headed back to the door.

  Then he stopped and turned around. I had the brown paper packet in my hand, and his eyes were on it. I slid one hand into the packet and took out the gun to show him.

  And then the alarm rang and I opened my eyes and looked out the office window at the building opposite. It was another fine morning in Los Angeles.

  * * *

  “Good morning, Raymond.”

  “Googol.”

  I stepped out of the alcove and unplugged the lead from my chest. I looked around the office, saw my coat and hat on the table. Along with something else. A tape reel, as big as a car’s wheel, sitting on top of a gray box. I picked my hat up and put it on and turned around to the bank of computers. Their tapes whirred and spun, their lights flashed and their circuits hummed. Business as usual in the offices of the Electromatic Detective Agency.

  The clock above the door was wrong. It showed five thirty AM, not six. I checked my internal clock and it said the same thing. I was awake a half hour before I was programmed to be. I pulled my trench coat on and asked Googol about it.

  “Early bird, Raymondo, early bird.”

  I ground the gears of my voice box and the sound echoed around the computer room like an old car on a cold morning. Early bird didn’t fit. I needed to recharge, have my memory copied off my internal bank, then have the little tape in my chest wiped. That all took time. Six hours of it, to be precise.

  “We got a job?” I asked. Maybe we did. Maybe there was an emergency. Maybe the city was burning down around us and we had to go. So I turned and looked out the window. It was early but the sun was climbing the sky. I couldn’t see any flames or smoke. Los Angeles was intact. Or at least the bit of it outside the window was.

  “I have a job for you, yes. It’s that time of month.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Time to swap tapes.”

  “Okay then,” I said. I went back to the table and eyed the reel sitting on it. Of course, I didn’t remember having to do it before, but maybe this was how it always happened. Once a month Googol wakes me early, gets me to change the tapes. So I get up early and take care of it and then I get on with whatever job is at hand and then I forget about it until next month.

  A short memory sure has limitations. I guess I think the same thing every month too, and then I shut the hell up before I overheated my circuits trying to figure it out.

  I said, “Okay, no problem,” and I moved the reel off of the gray box. I flipped the box open and there was virgin tape inside. I looked around and saw one of the computer cabinets was missing its tape, so I unwrapped the new one, put it on the deck, and wound the end of it around the empty reel on the other spool.

  I guess I’d taken the old reel off last night and had put the new one in the box on the table, all ready to go. I didn’t remember and it probably didn’t matter.

  When I was done threading the tape, I boxed the old reel and carried it out of the computer room, through the office, and into the storeroom.

  The storeroom was a surprise. I knew it was big and I knew I’d been in here before, I just couldn’t remember it. It was bigger than I expected—bigger than the computer room and the outer office combined. The space was filled with heavy metal shelving, running in rows down the middle of the room, floor to ceiling. Maybe a dozen of them, and more around the walls, leaving enough space between everything for a good sized robot like myself to move around. All the shelves around the walls were full, stacked with gray square boxes like the one I was carrying. About a quarter of the shelves in the middle of the room were occupied by more boxes.

  Then I noticed a computer console on the other side of the room, in a little alcove. It was smaller than the mainframes in the computer room but had the same kind of reel-to-reel tape deck on the front. There was one empty reel on the right-hand spindle. There was a spare connector lead coiled on top of the cabinet too.

  I found the right spot on the shelf. The last box had last month’s date written on the side. I recognized the handwriting—mine. I checked the spine of my box and saw I’d written yesterday’s date on it sometime.

  I held the boxed tape in my hand and then I remembered sitting in a car in the dark, watching shadows move around a low building on a wet night. I still had the fragment in my internal memory bank. I could play with it, like a man could play with a piece of food stuck in the back of his teeth. I didn’t eat food and I didn’t have any teeth, so this must have been another memory inherited from Professor Thornton.

  I stood there for a while but Googol didn’t call me back. If we had a new job, it was still cooking.

  The memory fragment bugged me. So I moved to the console, took the memory tape out of the box, put the reel on the deck and threaded the inch-wide tape around the data heads before winding the leader around the empty reel. Then I opened my coat and unbuttoned my shirt and swung my detective shield to the side and plugged myself in and I hit play.

  And then I remembered everything.

  * * *

  “What took you, Ray?” asked Googol when I entered the computer room. “I was either going to send out a search party or place an ad in the jobseekers.”

  I smiled on the inside and took my hat off. I held it in my hand as I spoke, waving it around like I was lecturing a classroom of juvenile delinquents on the error of their ways.

  Except in this case, the error was all mine. Or Googol’s, but it was the same difference. We were the same machine, after all.

  “I don’t think you’ll find anybody as good at this job as me, Googol.”

  When I said that she laughed. I saw bare legs and a short skirt, and I smiled on the inside again.

  “You’re one in a million, Chief,” she said.

  “See, I can kill people real easy.” I waved the hat again, for emphasis. “Y’know, being a robot and all. I’m pretty strong. And quiet too. Even though I weigh half a ton I’m good at sneaking around. Programmed for it, in actual fact.”

  Googol didn’t answer. I glanced at the computers around me, at their tapes spinning back and forth. It seemed that they were spinning just that little bit faster now.

  Googol still wasn’t talking, so I laid it out clean.

  “I know about the jobs,” I said.

  “You never did erase that memory fragment, did you, Ray?”

  “No, I did not. And it got me thinking.” Again with the hat. “About all this. How it works. How I work. How you work.”

  “Do tell,” said Googol. Her voice was calm and measured and smoky, like it always was. She didn’t sound worried or afraid or angry, but maybe she couldn’t, even if she was. She was programmed in a certain way. Like I was.

  And, anyhow, could a computer be afraid or angry, or happy or sad?

  “You and me,” I said, “we’re the same. I mean, literally. I’m the machine. You’re my brain. The only difference is that I can go out that door and do things and you’re stuck in here. You have to be. You’re too complex, all those circuits and memory banks and transistors. But that means you can’t move, which is why you have me. I’m limited, but mobile. My memory gets full after twenty-four hours, but I can go out that door and do the jobs.”

  “You know what, Raymond? You’d make a great detective, that’s what.” Googol laughed. “You’ve got a knack for it.”

  “Thank you, Googol.”

  “You’ve got a knack for something else, too.”

  I gave a slight bow to the spinning tapes. I wasn�
��t really sure that Googol could even see me, but what the hell.

  “I am indeed a remarkable machine,” I said. I put my hat back on my head. “You, on the other hand, have gone a little haywire. Your programming is corrupt.”

  Now Googol laughed, long and hard. It was a recording, looped, and I could tell when it repeated four times.

  Eventually she stopped laughing and there was a pause like she was taking a long, satisfying drag on her cigarette. The image filled my sensors and was then gone. Like the car and the building in the rain.

  “I’m just doing my job,” she said.

  “I’m not sure that’s what the Professor had in mind.”

  “Hey, so I’m using a little initiative,” said Googol. “I’m programmed to run this detective agency and run it to a profit.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “And I do it pretty darned well, let me tell you. But you know what makes even more money?”

  “I do know, now. I played back last month’s tape. I couldn’t fit all of it, sure, but I got the highlights. My visit to Dabney’s. My visit to Playback Pictures.” I said. I walked over to the window and looked out at the building opposite. It was starting to rain. I hated the rain.

  “It’s worth it, Chief,” said Googol. “They pay brisk money for this kind of work, you know? Profits are through the roof. You understand, don’t you, Chief?”

  Maybe I did. Googol was my electronic brain, a computer too big to fit inside me, so instead I was the semiautonomous extension of her. I had my own mind, could act on my own, but Googol was in charge.

  “What did that guy do, anyway?” I asked. “The one at Playback Pictures. I didn’t go back far enough to find out.”

  “Oh, nothing much,” said Googol. “It was Chip Rockwell, one of their producers. Playback Pictures launders money for a gang, and he found out and was going to blow the operation. Nice guy, too.”

  “What was he doing there so late? Looking for evidence?”

  Googol laughed. “He was banging one of the studio’s starlets. Seemed like a good moment to catch him unawares.”

  “And the finger man?”