RoboCop 2

by Ed Naha

  Faxx watched with glee as the procedure went on. Cain’s optical nerves and eyeballs, along with the brain and the spinal nervous system, were carefully removed and placed into a large, fluid-filled, glass tank. Life-support systems were hooked up to the tank.

  After two hours, Dr. Weltman looked up at Faxx and nodded. He removed his mask and smiled at her. Faxx rushed down into the operating theater.

  “Success?” she asked.

  “Success,” Weltman nodded.

  An intern walked up to Weltman. “What should we do with that?”

  He pointed to Cain’s head, lying sans body on the operating table. Its eyes were gone, its cranium was empty. Weltman shrugged. “Toss it.”

  The intern picked up the remnants of the head and dumped it into a container. He wheeled the container out of the room.

  Faxx smiled at the doctor. “Up for a drink, Doctor?”

  “Of course, Doctor,” Weltman replied.

  The two doctors, accompanied by the assisting team, left the operating room.

  Behind, in the tank, a pair of baleful eyes watched them go, their brain registering anger.

  The essence of Cain—his mind, his memories, and his vision—made out the figures of Faxx and Weltman from behind the veil of thick fluid percolating around it.

  Cain was alive.

  Alive!

  [ 24 ]

  With the strike over, life returned to normal in the Old Detroit stationhouse, which is to say that hell was breaking loose every 6.7 seconds. In an office area housing dozens of cubicles, separated only by paper-thin pressboard “walls,” cops sat bleary-eyed, taking complaints from agitated citizens. Lewis sat at a computer console, clumsily transcribing handwritten notes to CompuFiles. RoboCop walked by her.

  “Hey, Murphy? That liquor store holdup last week—did you get the address?”

  Robo didn’t break step. “663 North Mitsubishi.”

  “Oh, right,” Lewis said, continuing to mangle a keypad. “They had a hostage. What’s that make the charge code?”

  “Baker Allen Three, subsection twelve.”

  “Thanks.” Lewis hit the wrong keys. “Shit.”

  Stef walked up to Robo. “Hey, Murphy, the sarge wants to see you in his office.”

  Robo nodded and walked toward Reed’s office without saying a word.

  Lewis glanced at Stef. “What’s up?”

  “Who the hell knows? Reed says it’s personal. You tell me what that means.” Stef shrugged, sliding into his own cubicle. “I hate paperwork.”

  Robo walked by a long stretch of actual office space, sputtering to a skidding halt as he heard a familiar voice. A female voice. The voice of Ellen Murphy, wife of Alex J. Murphy, deceased.

  “That’s all right, Tom,” the voice announced. “I know where it is. I’ll get it myself.”

  Ellen Murphy strode out of the office, empty coffee cup in hand, and walked directly into Robo. She stared up into Robo’s deep blue eyes. Robo stood immobile. It was the closest thing to heartbreak he had experienced since breathing his last breath as a human.

  “Uh, excuse me,” he said politely.

  Ellen’s attorney, Tom Delaney, ran up behind Ellen. He shook his head, frowning.

  Robo swiveled his head as another lawyer, a by-the-books type with a forehead filled with sweat, hopped onto the scene. “Oh, damnit!” Holzgang, the OCP attorney, muttered.

  Delaney turned to Holzgang. “You said she wouldn’t have to see him!”

  Holzgang spun round and faced Reed’s desk. Reed was already drumming his fingers on his desktop in exasperation. “Come on, Ellen.”

  Reed stood up and guided a white-faced Ellen away. Her eyes continued to gaze into Robo’s as Reed led her down the corridor into a second office. Delaney faced RoboCop, pointing to the office. “My name is Tom Delaney,” he announced. “I’m an attorney. My client is the widow of police officer Alex Murphy. I have to speak with you. It’s very important.”

  Delaney guided Robo inside. An angry Holzgang followed. “I’m representing you from OCP, RoboCop. Don’t say anything. Not one word!”

  Delaney eased himself into a chair. Robo and Holzgang remained standing. “Have you been spying on Mrs. Murphy?” Delaney asked Robo.

  The cyborg stared down at him in silence.

  “Her neighbors have seen you drive by her home a dozen times in the past two months,” Delaney continued.

  Robo nodded. “Yes. I have.”

  Holzgang spun on the towering figure. “Will you shut up!”

  Robo pivoted his body and stared down at the little man, his eyes blazing from beneath his visor. Holzgang’s legs began to quiver as Robo said, hotly and evenly, “No . . . I will not shut up!”

  Delaney, the younger of the two lawyers, was enjoying the scene. “I’d be the last man on earth to ever come between a man and his wife, but—”

  Holzgang shook with rage. “This is not Alex Murphy,” he said, thrusting a finger at Robo’s metallic torso. “This is an OCP product that incorporates certain neurological matter from Murphy’s corpse. And yes, Murphy signed a release for the parts before his death.”

  Holzgang glared at RoboCop. “And that’s what you’re going to say. On tape! So this doesn’t happen again.”

  Robo ignored the frustrated Holzgang and listened to Delaney. “We’re worried about her pension benefits. You see, OCP has been making threats.”

  Robo whirled and glared at Holzgang. The lawyer held his ground. “We want a statement from you. You cooperate, and Murphy’s wife and kid get all the benefits of being the family of a shot cop. You mess with us, they get zip. Nada. Goose eggs.”

  Robo snarled and took a step toward the lawyer, catching himself in time and curbing his mounting anger. Delaney got to his feet. “Please, Officer,” he said soothingly, “it’s better for everyone involved if you cooperate. It’s better for her. It’s better for your son.”

  But what about me? Robo thought. “I will . . . cooperate,” he announced.

  Holzgang dismissed Delaney with a nod. The lawyer representing Murphy’s wife disappeared, and a video cameraman took his place.

  Outside, in the hallway, Lewis was making her way down the corridor, stacks of forms in her hands. She saw Robo standing next to the two men.

  “All right,” Holzgang said, “let’s get this over with. Are you ready?”

  Robo nodded. “I am ready.”

  Lewis peered into the office as Holzgang nodded to the video technician. The cameraman began the tape as Holzgang interviewed Robo. “If I were to describe you as a piece of machinery that utilized some living tissue, would that be accurate?”

  “Yes,” Robo answered.

  “And so,” said Holzgang with a smile, “you are not a human, are you?”

  “I am not human,” Robo announced.

  “Therefore,” Holzgang continued, “will you admit that you are not deserving of any rights accorded to human beings under the law?”

  Robo locked his jaw and remained silent.

  “I require an answer,” Holzgang said.

  Robo remained silent.

  Holzgang turned to the cameraman. “Stop tape, John.”

  He faced Robo. “Look, I don’t think you like me very much. You probably think I’m a real bastard. But you’ve got me wrong—all wrong.”

  Robo turned to leave the room, Holzgang at his heels. “You’re the one who’s being the bastard,” Holzgang argued. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to that poor woman?”

  Robo turned to face the lawyer. Holzgang yanked a folder out of his briefcase nearby and thrust it into Robo’s hands. “Take a look at her file.” Holzgang sneered. “Go on, read it!”

  Robo scanned the file as Holzgang continued to harangue him. “Up until a few months ago, Mrs. Murphy wouldn’t leave her bedroom. She even began to wear her husband’s clothes, just to feel closer to him. Then there were the therapists and the hypnotists and the harmonic treatments. She’s barely started to accept the loss. She’s
gone back to work. Then you pull this shit!”

  Robo’s hands began to tremble. Holzgang closed in for the kill. “You’re ripping her to pieces, you know that? And for what? What can you offer her? Companionship? Love? A man’s love? You think you’ve got what it takes to be a husband to her?”

  Robo gently closed the folder and handed it back to Holzgang. “No,” he said quietly. He nodded to the cameraman. “You may proceed with your taping.”

  Holzgang started up again. “Do you believe you are in any way entitled to the rights and privileges accorded to human beings under our system of law?”

  “No.” Robo sighed. “I have no rights.”

  “You are simply a machine?”

  “I am . . . a machine.”

  “Nothing more?”

  “Nothing more,” Robo said flatly.

  “That’ll do it,” said Holzgang, and the cameraman lowered the video unit. “You may come with me now.”

  Lewis darted into an empty work space as Holzgang led Robo into the office where an ashen-faced Ellen sat. Delaney was beside her.

  “Alex!” Ellen exclaimed, starting out of her chair.

  Robo stood silently, as motionless as a statue.

  “Don’t you know me, Alex?” Ellen began to sob.

  Robo regarded her stonily.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” Ellen asked.

  Holzgang nudged Robo. “Answer the lady.”

  Robo’s words were slow in coming. Ellen left her seat and placed her hand on Robo’s chest, where Alex J. Murphy’s heart would have been had there still been an Alex J. Murphy.

  “Alex,” she sobbed, “it doesn’t matter what they’ve done to you . . . It doesn’t. It doesn’t!”

  Robo stared at the wall on the opposite side of the room, avoiding her gaze. “I am sorry, ma’am,” he announced. “I do not know you.”

  Robo turned and marched out of the room. Ellen collapsed into her chair in tears, overwhelmed by the loss of her husband a second time.

  Delaney gingerly supported the woman and led her through and out of the stationhouse, where a cab awaited them.

  Robo stood alone in an empty office and, through a shattered window, watched them go.

  [ 25 ]

  RoboCop sat motionless on his throne in the RoboChamber, his helmet off. Tak Akita had given up trying to monitor Robo’s system readouts: There were none. He left the room, muttering dark oaths.

  Robo continued to sit. Lewis appeared at the doorway, carrying her brown-bagged lunch with her. “Mind if I have my lunch here?”

  Robo stared blankly ahead.

  Lewis shrugged, sat down across from Robo, and pulled a sandwich out of her bag.

  “You know what really pisses me off?” she said, munching on her dripping sandwich. “The shit that son of a bitch pulled. Extortion is what it was. They don’t even pay you for the work you do.”

  Robo’s left hand began tapping up and down on the metal armrest, a move Lewis recognized as totally human, a gesture of contained fury.

  “I know you had to say that stuff,” Lewis continued. “But it’s just not true. It’s not like they say. You’re not what they say you are. You’re not a machine. You’re more than that.”

  Lewis gazed deeply into Robo’s eyes. “You’re a whole lot more than that.”

  Robo’s hand closed around the armrest, crumpling the metal. Without a word, he stood up, grabbed his helmet, and stormed out of the room. Lewis threw down her sandwich. “Yeah, nice talking with you, too.”

  She trotted after Robo. She heard his TurboCruiser screech onto the street in front of the station. “Damn,” she muttered.

  Minutes later, Robo’s car skidded to a stop outside a vast junkyard, a chainlink fence firmly in place to keep the public out of the refuse-littered landscape.

  Robo marched out of his car and approached the fence. He grabbed it with his left hand and, with a sudden jerk, ripped the fence apart. He walked into the junkyard, easing the fragmented fence closed behind him.

  Robo walked silently through the burial ground of mangled cars and discarded home appliances. Cranes swung back and forth, lifting the metal debris with their powerful magnets. Robo watched as the cranes sucked up the forgotten metal slabs and loaded them onto a large rolling conveyor belt. The conveyor belt fed metallic debris into a screeching, screaming, flailing machine that spat out bits of shrapnel when it was done munching the junk.

  Robo scanned the junkyard.

  He gazed down at his own hands.

  Metal.

  For a moment, it appeared to him that they were also rusted, discarded, without purpose.

  He closed his eyes and daydreamed, seeing himself frozen solid by rust. He envisioned the mighty magnets lifting his long-outmoded, creaky, corroded body toward the conveyor belt. The conveyor accepted the offering without question. The whining, flailing machine nourished itself on Robo’s body, tearing it to pieces with rotating, razor-sharp teeth. His remains exited the belly of the beast on the far side of the conveyor. Robo’s remains landed with those of the toasters, the microwaves, the VW vans.

  “Hey!” came a voice.

  Robo blinked. Lewis was scrambling through the junkyard. He turned his back on her and continued staring at the conveyor belt.

  Lewis’s anger built as she approached the solitary soldier. Reaching down, she picked up a large length of pipe and stalked toward Robo, livid.

  “Murphy!” she yelled. “What the hell do you think you’re doing out here! Damn it, you answer me!”

  Robo kept his back to her.

  “I said, answer me!” Lewis screamed. She stopped four feet behind him, aware that his gaze was focused on the ever-hungry conveyor belt.

  “Feeling pretty damned sorry for yourself, aren’t you?” she sneered. “I said answer me, goddamnit!”

  She leaped forward and swung the pipe at Robo. Clang! She made contact with his back. No movement. No reaction.

  “I am so sick of your shit!” she screamed.

  She hit him a second time. Robo slowly turned and faced her, staring at her impassively.

  Lewis’s face was beet red now. “You’re not fooling me like you are everybody else! I know you! I know what you are! I know who you are!”

  Furious at Robo’s passive manner, she swung the pipe again. Robo lifted his right hand and caught it, wrenched it from her grasp, and tossed it away. In a total rage, she tried to tackle him, punching him in the chest. Robo watched her as she let out a yelp of pain, pulling her fist away from his torso.

  “Are you in need of medical attention?” he asked mechanically.

  “Oh, fuck you,” Lewis said, wincing. “ ‘Are you in need of medical attention?’ Jeezuz, you don’t even know how to talk to a woman. The hell with you. You like that machine over there? You want that machine? Go to it, buster. Go Cuisinart yourself.”

  Lewis turned to leave. Robo extended his arm and pulled her close to him. She tilted her head up, surprised. Their faces were so close they could kiss. She gazed at him, trying to both play it tough and crumble in his embrace.

  “Do you have something to say to me?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Robo nodded.

  He abruptly released her. She took a step backward, her eyes remaining on his.

  Robo titled his head like a good toy soldier. “Thank you for your concern,” he announced.

  He began to march away. He passed a confused Lewis and made his way to his cruiser. He got into his vehicle and drove off, leaving Lewis still standing in the junkyard.

  She sighed and began to walk to her vehicle, gingerly stepping over the mounds of trash.

  “Men!” she cursed.

  [ 26 ]

  Hob curled his skinny elfin body in a large chair and watched the tube, hogging down a plate of greasy french fries oozing catsup. He was child old before his time, with a megalomaniac’s brain thriving behind his eyes. He wolfed down the fries in a feeding frenzy, enjoying his newfound sense of power, of purpose. Behind him, loung
ing on a couch, the frizzy-haired Angie sipped champagne. She was feeling younger, more alive, than she had in years. Well, maybe months. Her brain was so clouded for the most part that all sense of time had become totally relative.

  Hob gazed at the TV. “Hey,” he said. “I’m a kid, and this strikes me as being dumb.”

  Angie nodded. She relished guiding Hob through puberty.

  On the tube, a contortionist violinist was finishing an excruciating version of the golden oldie “Born to Be Wild” on a stage constructed in a slipshod manner in front of a bank of telephones. Bored operators stared at the phones, none of which were ringing. A banner behind the stage read SAVE OUR CITY TELETHON. As the violinist wrenched out the last gut-wrenching note, an overly enthusiastic Mayor Kuzak hopped onto the stage, slapping his palms together as if trying to ward off frostbite.

  “Spike Stretzletski from Linden, New Jersey, folks,” Kuzak boomed. “A transplanted Detroiter, he came out for Detroit. Now you come out for him! The lines are open, waiting for your pledge! Whatever you can spare. Let’s keep this grand city afloat, huh?”

  A single phone rang in the background. A bored, gum-popping operator made a move to answer it. Kuzak leaped at the phone, yanking it to his ear.

  “Hi, howareya,” Kuzak bubbled. “It’s the mayor.”

  The voice of an old woman creaked over the phone. “I’ve lived in Detroit City all my life, so I’m sending in one dollar right now.”

  Kuzak’s smile froze. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

  He faced the pledge board. “So, where does that put us, Gilly?”

  An overaged showgirl, whose torso defied several laws of gravity every time she took a step, waddled up to the electronic scorecard. MOTOWN NEEDS: $37,985,300.00. The board whirled. RECEIVED SO FAR: $4,800.75.

  Kuzak clutched to his smile like a drowning sailor to a life preserver.

  In his new penthouse, Hob turned to Angie. He grinned, hatching a scheme. He leaned over Angie’s ample breasts and whispered something in her ear.

  She eagerly agreed and punched a number into her phone. Hob watched with glee as Mayor Kuzak spun around as another phone resounded.