by Brian Parker
“I heard about your raids yesterday. Good work, Detective. There are probably twenty more where those came from.”
“Do you know of any?”
“Just rumors. Cybernetic enhancements are here to stay. There are plenty of uses for the technology that are not criminally motivated,” he stated. “The edge they give manual laborers, for example, could be used to great effect. If a man can up his stamina or strength, then he is more useful to the company he works for, thus increasing his job security. I think if you take a good, hard look around, you may find all sorts of people who are willing to take that step in order to keep their jobs. Hell, professional sports are full of enhanced individuals and everyone cheers for them,” he said, gesturing at the autographed footballs on the shelves. “Why should it be any different for someone who busts their ass all day long for a much smaller paycheck?”
I jutted my chin toward the window. “Are any of your workers out there enhanced?”
He shrugged. “I’m the owner and CEO of several large corporations, Detective; most of which rely on manual, human labor. I don’t typically interact with my employees. There are several layers of middle management between us. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that I have enhanced employees working in my companies. My employees are scared that they’ll be replaced by robots and drones, so they’ll do whatever they can to keep the edge.”
“Are you going to replace them?”
He snorted in laughter. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. That’s why I asked the damn question, Mr. Ladeaux.”
“In the long run—about six years—it would be profitable to replace two humans with a single droid, but I can’t afford to do that across the board all at once. A run-of-the-mill droid, not a skinjob, costs around one-and-a-quarter million. It quickly goes up in price for artificial skin, adaptive AI, and all the other things that my pleasure droids have. My workers earn an average of a hundred K each. You figure one droid could replace two shifts and have to be powered down for the third shift, so it would earn out in about six years.”
“And you don’t have several hundred million just sitting around.”
“Exactly. I see these protests by the city’s workers and I laugh. Of course, everyone has a story about knowing somebody who was replaced by a droid or their job got downsized to an AI instructing hundreds of students at once, but it’s not realistic to believe that droids are suddenly going to flood the market and take all the jobs. They are too expensive, for now.”
I hadn’t thought of it in that respect. The astronomical costs associated with the robotic industry did make it nearly impossible to replace all of the workers like they feared. Outside of a few megacorporations, it couldn’t be done. Maybe a phased approach over several years or decades, but the average small business simply couldn’t do it. I’d have to dig into the feasibility of Amir’s plan to add a droid; he didn’t pay his workers anything near a hundred thousand.
“Good point,” I said aloud. “It doesn’t seem practicable to replace an entire workforce.”
“It’s not. That’s one of the main reasons I’m concerned with advancing my partnership with Cybertronic Solutions beyond companionship droids. If I can reduce the price of advanced worker droids, I’d abandon human workers in a heartbeat.” He pointed toward the door. “The only reason I have Betty out there is because she’s refurbished from one of my clubs. Otherwise I couldn’t have justified the up-front cost.”
“So why all the sex bots then?”
He leaned back, “Because there’s a huge market for it. People can pick up a hooker, and all of the associated diseases, anywhere. But a sex droid? Only Easytown, Las Vegas, New York, Amsterdam, and Bangkok have them—unless someone wants to purchase their own, but the cost is prohibitive.”
I nodded, thinking about Andi’s constant request that I give her a CS01 body—at the cost of two million dollars.
“Besides, government-mandated health care for sex workers is astronomical. It makes their per-unit cost more than a droid in just a few years, more if one of them gets injured on the job, but I have to keep them in stock too since the market demands options.”
Ladeaux slapped the desk lightly. “I love talking shop with you, Detective, but I’m a busy man and you didn’t come here to learn about sex droids. You were discussing your raids on the cybernetic enhancement facilities, what is it that I can do for you?”
“Do you know a Farouk Karimov? He works for you here in the Dockyards.”
“Hmm…” Voodoo tapped his screen and said, “Farouk Karimov.”
A holographic rendering of Karimov appeared over the desk between us. He used his hands to rotate the image, spreading his fingers to zoom in on the hologram’s face.
Shaking his head, Voodoo tapped a folder icon which brought up a few strings of text. “Says he works as a stevedore in Warehouse Six and Dock Four,” he said. “Never seen him before. What did he do?”
“His name has come up a few times in connection with an ongoing investigation and I’ve been unable to talk to him at his residence.”
“His file says he’s at work today.” He hit a few more keys and a map of the complex came up. “We’re here,” he stated, showing me the Marie Leveau Shipping Company headquarters on the hologram. A line shot from the headquarters, following along several roads and pathways until it terminated at a warehouse. “This is Warehouse Six.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Mind if I go over there and ask a few questions?”
Voodoo leaned back. “I wouldn’t have shown you where it was if I wasn’t okay with you going down there.”
“Alright. Thank you, Mr. Ladeaux,” I said, standing. “I’m gonna go down there, have a look around, and ask some questions. Nothing major.”
Voodoo stood up as well. He leaned across, stretching out his hand. “Please don’t shoot the place up, Detective. It’s bad for business and hell on the insurance.”
I shook his offered hand; I owed him that much with all the help he’d given me. “I’m not going down there to get into a fight,” I assured him. “But Karimov owes me some serious answers about a few things and I intend to get them—today.”
SIXTEEN: THURSDAY
The Jeep wound around the Dockyards’ narrow roads toward Warehouse Six. The road was gravel, as most of the entire area seemed to be. From what I could tell as I looked out the windows, the roads were little more than pathways made from giant shipping containers, laid out like a maze. The containers towered above me two or three high in most places.
The path was relatively straight-forward with only a few turns that were different from what Tommy Voodoo had shown me. The shipping containers had been rearranged into the winding corridor that I found myself in now, making me wonder when the last time the CEO had left the headquarters building to check on his employees.
The Jeep did a decent job of navigating the shipping containers, but there were a few times when it had to stop, reverse and go back the way we’d came from to try a different route. I felt vulnerable in that corridor for the entire time I was in there. It wouldn’t take much to block it off and then someone could take their time to eliminate a threat against them. I hated being in the shadows of those containers.
It took about eight minutes for the Jeep to get to Warehouse Six. The massive, grey cinderblock building seemed indistinguishable from the others I’d seen through gaps in the shipping container walls other than a large number “6” painted above the hangar-style doors. A constant stream of large tractors carrying forty-foot containers from a cargo ship moved in and out of the warehouse as smaller forklifts darted around and between them, placing smaller containers in semi-trucks lined up to haul the goods to their next destination. It appeared to be a carefully choreographed dance, with the participants narrowly skirting disaster at every turn.
The larger containers were being unloaded from a ship flying a Japanese flag; nothing interesting there, other than the fact that they’d had to sail completely around South Americ
a to get here. I assumed it was cheaper than disgorging their contents on the West Coast and driving them overland to the Midwest. But what did I know. It may have just been more convenient.
“Andi, can you run a track on the ship being unloaded now?”
“Sure. What are the hull identification numbers printed on the side of the ship?”
I read a long string of numbers and she came back instantly, telling me the boat was registered to a shipping company in Kitakyushu, Japan. Their cargo manifest stated that they were bringing in containers from various technology companies, including one that specialized in robotics.
After observing the controlled chaos before me, I directed the Jeep to park about three hundred feet away from the warehouse. I decided to walk the rest of the way in, that way my car wouldn’t get crushed by an errant tractor or dropped shipping container.
I dodged the tractors with the forty-foot containers, learning quickly that they couldn’t see an individual on the ground around their cargo. The more-numerous and smaller forklifts were harder to avoid, but they could also see where they going, so I didn’t feel they were nearly as dangerous as the bigger ones and chose my path to the doorway based on where they were.
The sun from this morning had carried over to the afternoon and I was sweating slightly by the time I pulled open the door to what I assumed was the office. New Orleans would guarantee I got wet one way or another.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dimness inside the building. When they did, I realized I’d walked directly into a short hallway. Three doors on either side led to smaller offices and a doorway at the end bore the sign “Hard hats required beyond this point.”
“Hello?” I called out.
“Yeah? Come on in. Third door on the right.”
As I walked down the hallway, I realized the doors on the left weren’t offices as I’d thought they were. One was a break room and the other two were restrooms. The first two doors on the right were closed and unmarked. That only left the last doorway, which was open.
“Hi,” I said to the fat, balding man behind a desk stacked high with memory drives, files, and empty food containers.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’m Detective Zach Forrest from the NOPD,” I replied, showing my badge. “I’m looking for a worker that the company headquarters says works in this warehouse.”
He grunted. “Okay. Who you lookin’ for, pal?”
“A stevedore. Guy named Karimov. Farouk Karimov. You know where I can find him?”
“Aww, Christ! What did that dumb sonofabitch do now?” The guy didn’t even try to hide his disgust and anger that painted his face.
“Does he have a record of creating problems for you?” I asked.
“He’s lazy as all get out, but not really a problem-maker, I guess. He misses about three or four days a month, but the damn union is so tight that I can’t fire the guy. He’s always got some excuse that’s part of the excused absences section of the union contract. I swear. One day I’m gonna catch him lying about an absence. That I can fire him for.”
“Where’s he at now? I need to speak to him about a few things.”
The chair squeaked pitifully as the foreman shifted his bulk, rotating the chair until he faced a grossly out-of-date computer screen that had to be at least fifty years old. He tapped a few keys on an antiquated plastic keyboard and hundreds of icons appeared on the screen. He moved around some strange device connected by a wire that made the cursor on his screen move until he clicked on a file folder. Then he scrolled through an alphabetical list of names, resting the cursor over Karimov’s name and then he clicked again.
All of the dots disappeared except for one, moving slowly across the screen. He used the device to chase the dot until the cursor was over it and he clicked down. “Says he’s in a smaller forklift inside the warehouse right now, moving cargo from a container over that way,” he gestured toward the far left corner of the warehouse. “Oh, you’re in luck, it’s a yellow one, so just look for a yellow forklift and then stop the guy when you see him.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“No problem. I hope you bust that slacker so I can fire him and get a decent worker in here.”
I didn’t bother to shake the foreman’s hand, I really didn’t have time to get sick from whatever was growing in that man’s office. He turned back to whatever he’d been doing when I walked in, and a strange sucking sound came from behind me. Not gonna look back at that, I told myself.
I don’t know what kind of luck the foreman thought I had, but telling me to look for a yellow forklift was like telling a beekeeper that you wanted to find one particular bee. Yellow forklifts zoomed by in all directions. About the only other color that was as prevalent as yellow was a dark green. The rest were blue, red, and an occasional white one. At least my search was narrowed in half.
I’d only seen Karimov in person once, and that was from far away during the riot against droids. I’d seen his mugshots and identification card photos and a video of him at the Liquid Genesis when it got attacked. As I stood there, swaying slightly to avoid the closest of the forklifts, I wondered again at Karimov’s connection with the mass shooting that left thirty-two people dead and another sixty-plus injured.
Corrigan worked for Karimov, and he got his weapons from Terri Solomon. There were lots of cryptic files at Solomon’s shop indicating that “K” purchased cybernetic upgrades and weaponry. It was circumstantial, at best, but I knew without a doubt that the letter referred to Karimov. So why, then, did Solomon’s two bodyguards shoot up the club where he was at? It didn’t make any sense.
Too late, my mind registered a yellow flash barreling straight toward me.
The edge of one metal fork glanced off my hipbone as I dove sideways to avoid impalement from the yellow forklift. When I landed, pain exploded across my pelvis. Even that glancing blow had been enough to shatter my hipbone.
I struggled to get up, but my leg wouldn’t respond. Out of my periphery, I saw the forklift wheeling for another pass. I dragged myself as quickly as I could, trying to make it to the cover of a pallet stacked high with boxes. I thought that if I could put it between me and the forklift, I’d—
What? Get crushed against the side of the pallet? I chided myself.
I rolled onto my back, abandoning the foolish effort to crawl away, and drew my gun. The yellow forklift that had hit me was coming toward me fast. I lifted my arm wearily, aiming at the Plexiglas windshield. A smear of bright white from the lights overhead marred the surface, obscuring the driver, so I couldn’t tell who it was.
I fired once, twice, a third time at where the driver should have been, but the machine kept coming, undeterred by my ineffectual bullets. There wasn’t enough time to switch to the Aegis.
I was going to be crushed.
“Shots fired, boss,” Andi’s voice came through my earpiece. “Do you require assistance?”
I ignored her; there were more pressing concerns at the moment. I cried out in pain, pushing through the physical anguish as I threw my body out of the path of the forklift. It passed by so close that if I’d been wearing my raincoat, it would have ran over the hem.
My stomach churned, and my vision swam. My body was reacting to the trauma. If it shut down on me, I was a goner.
The forklift began to turn again and I fumbled for the Aegis, but my fingers couldn’t grasp the handle. They did, however, accidentally push against where my hipbone should have been, sending new waves of agony through my body.
“Pretty sure my hip is crushed,” I groaned, hoping Andi was monitoring closely.
Squealing tires announced that the forklift had completed its turn and was bearing down on me. I didn’t have the energy to move like I had a moment ago. I tried, but my body refused to respond.
So this is it then? I asked myself. All those years of work, just to give up now? Get up! Kick this guy’s ass!
The pep talk strengthened my resolve and I trie
d to move again. My body still wouldn’t react. The lower half of my body had simply stopped listening to what I told it to do.
I stared helplessly at the yellow blur bearing down on me. I was done for.
Then, another forklift slammed into the side of my attacker. The yellow forklift skidded sideways, and its wheels left the ground as the second machine began lifting its forks. In seconds, the momentum had taken over and the forklift that had hit me toppled sideways, crashing to the warehouse floor onto its side.
A man leapt from the machine and ran toward the back of the large building. He quickly disappeared between the lines of tractors and shipping containers. From what I could tell, he was slim, average height, and had dark, slicked-back hair. No way of telling if it was Karimov.
I yelled, trying to get the other workers to stop the fleeing attacker, but they couldn’t hear me over the sounds of the heavy machinery.
“Andi, call an ambulance and a couple of black and whites.”
“Got it. How badly are you injured?”
“Can’t move my legs. Hip broken.”
A woman stepped out of the forklift that had saved me, and walked over to where I lay. She eyed my gun warily and said, “Hey, mister. You ’kay?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “I’m not dead, thanks to you. You saved my life.”
I wasn’t dead, but I felt like it. I
“Twer’t no thing,” she said, smiling. “What’d you do to get that guy all riled up?”
“I’m a cop,” I replied through gritted teeth. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. Don’t pass out. “Needed to talk to him…” I took a deep breath before continuing. “About his possible connection with a murder.”
“Oh. You’s out here causin’ trouble,” she grumbled. “No wonder he try to kill you. I let Bobby know you’re here, but I don’t have no business with the cops.”
“I’m not—” I stopped myself, grimacing as I tried to sit up. No dice; my body wouldn’t let me move. I was used to people not wanting to be around police officers, and especially not wanting to be seen helping one out. This woman had saved my life, but she hadn’t known I was a cop.