by J. N. Chaney
“What did I eat for breakfast?” I had asked the department’s AI, thinking I’d stump it. While it didn’t have a physical form that I could see, it did utilize a voice emulator displayed as sound waves on a large monitor that hung in front of the glass-encased computer room that housed the “brain,” as they called it.
“Based upon the grease stains on your hands and shirt,” it said, “plus the yolk dried on above your lip, and the trace amounts of methane and sulfur emanating from your rectum, the data supports poultry eggs and synthetic bacon.”
“He just smelled your ass, Officer Reed!” said one of the other cops on the tour.
“That’s not all he’ll do to yours,” I said with a smirk.
Smiling at the memory, I continued down the black corridor, waiting for something to jump out and shoot me, kick me, dismember me—something. But nothing happened. That was, until the lights in the hallway went out, leaving me under a single pin light, totally surrounded by black.
“AI person?” I asked. “You there?”
The pin light went out. Dammit. My adrenaline kicked in, heart rate increasing. I didn’t like this—not one bit.
At the exact second I was about to try running back the way I’d come, the lights came on. I stood in the middle of an immense room with black floors and black ceilings nearly ten meters high. Two of the walls were floor-to-ceiling glass, looking into open sky with lights shining down to the clouds several kilometers below. I caught my breath, shocked by the view, and not daring to get any closer than I already was.
The opposite two walls were giant screens—floor to ceiling—and displayed a forest scene with a steady waterfall and a meandering stream. It was so clear, I swore that I was looking at the real thing. I could even feel a damp breeze against my cheek, and the smell of decaying leaves, pine needles, and lavender. What was this place?
“Please, sit,” said the man. No, the AI. This was getting complicated.
“Where? On the floor?”
No sooner had I posed the question than a seat emerged from the floor. It rose from a trapdoor, bearing a head rest, arm rests, and several lights at the ends of articulated arms.
“Is… is it safe?” I asked.
“Entirely. Please sit so I may examine your body.”
“I think I’m good,” I replied. Hell if I was going to sit in some AI’s death chair! This is exactly how people died on the holos. Probed by aliens. Not the way I’m going out. No, thank you.
“Sir, I regret to inform you that if I do not help treat you, you are seventy-eight percent likely to develop an infection in the next thirty minutes.”
“Doesn’t sound so bad to me.” I’d had worse.
“Of course not, because you will succumb to acute blood loss in twenty-one minutes.”
“Oh,” I said. “That does sound bad.”
“So… what do I call you?” I asked, now seated in the medical chair. I swear it shifted to fit my ass. It felt weird, yet strangely comfortable. Maybe a little too comfortable.
“My original designation,” said the AI, “is L12-A-1R-S. But Mr. Oragga prefers to call me Larthinian.”
“Yeah, neither of those are gonna work for me,” I replied.
“As in, you’d like to call me something different, sir?”
I nodded. “How about Lars?”
“If that is what you prefer to call me, I will respond to that designation from now on.”
Lars had no sooner finished his little acceptance speech than an articulated arm raised up from between my legs. The thing resembled a giant spider leg with a multitool at the end.
“What the—?” I jumped out of the seat, jarring the spindly looking arm as I did.
“Sir, please do not be alarmed. This is a medical tool that—”
“You’re not touching me with that thing!”
“I can assure you that Mr. Oragga has used this device several times himself.”
“Yeah? Well, I’m not Mr. Oragga, so…”
“I should remind you that you will succumb to acute blood loss in nineteen minutes.”
“So you’ve mentioned.” I looked down at the pool of blood at the base of the chair. “Just don’t probe me, okay?”
“Probe you, sir?”
“Never mind.” I shook my head and sat back down, glaring at the multitool. “Let’s just get this over with. Do what you need to do, Lars.”
“Very well, sir. Please remain stationary.”
“Trust me, I won’t move a muscle. But you so much as touch me where I’m not wounded, or miss an incision or something—”
“I never miss, sir.”
The multitool started by cutting my pants leg away below the knee, which wasn’t hard, since the fabric was already torn enough as it was. I could hear small servos winding as the arm moved back and forth, a small rotating saw slicing through the cloth. Next, a bright light scanned the laceration on my calf. I felt a strange tingling sensation.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“I am disinfecting the area,” Lars replied.
“With light?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. Now, you may feel some pressure.”
“Some pre—dammit!” I looked down and saw a needle jammed into my flesh. “What’s that for?”
“It’s a local anesthetic, sir.”
“Well, tell it to work faster.”
“It should be numbing you… now.”
The sting dissipated faster than I expected, which was fine by me. Feeling relief in the leg for the first time since I cut it in the duct made me relax, even made me sleepy. I wanted to keep looking down at the multitool and see it do its work—more to keep an eye on Lars than anything else—but I was tired. And the chair felt really good.
“Lars?” I asked, noticing I slurred his name.
“Yes, sir?”
“Did you put something else in that shot besides… besides a local… a local anesth… ana… what’s wrong with me?”
“I believe you are feeling the effects of the sedative I injected, sir.”
“You drugged me?” I tried sitting upright, but my body was not responding. “Son of a bitch.”
“This will all be over with in a few minutes.”
“Don’t probe me, Lars.” I struggled to keep my eyes open but lost the fight. “Don’t you dare probe me…”
7
I sat at the dining room table in my usual spot, holding my cup of coffee. I looked down at the steaming black liquid and noticed the surface was vibrating, resonating like the mug sat on top of a subwoofer or something. Easy does it, Flint, I told myself. One minute at a time.
“Hey, babe,” came Heather’s voice. I looked up to see her in a silk nightgown, moving around the island to pour herself a cup of coffee. Her auburn hair was tied back in a braid with a few loose strands dancing around her ears. She turned from the coffee maker and headed my way, her bare legs glinting in the sunlight that streamed through the half-opened shades. She set her own mug down on the table but came around behind me instead of sitting down.
“Are you feeling as tense as you look?” she asked, her fingers starting to massage my shoulders. Gods, she knew what I liked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “How tense do I look?”
“Like you’re going to pop someone in the mouth if they look at you the wrong way,” she replied.
“So pretty normal then.”
Heather laughed. “Ha, yeah. I guess you’re right.”
I took a sip of the coffee and tried to relax as Heather worked her magic. Her hands had a way of clearing my head, of driving out all the thoughts that didn’t belong, and zeroing in on the one or two that did.
“You know you don’t need to be nervous,” she said.
“I’m not nervous,” I replied. Probably too quickly.
“Okay, Mr. I’m about to take down the city’s largest drug operation in history,” Heather replied.
“It’s not that big a deal,” I insisted.
“
Would you listen to yourself right now?” She stopped massaging and slapped my neck.
“Hey! What was that for?”
Heather crossed around in front of me and pulled out her chair.
“Wait, don’t stop.” I pointed to my shoulders. “I’ll play nice. Just come back. You’re not done.”
“Not before we get a few things clear,” Heather said. She sure knew how to manipulate me. But I’d never let her know that, of course.
“Then shoulders?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“You’re as stubborn as your mother,” I said.
“And you’re worse.”
“No one’s worse than your mother,” I said from inside my coffee mug.
“I heard that, Flint.” She smiled, then took a sip of her own coffee. “I know this is a big deal to you. You don’t have to act like it’s not.”
“Good, because it’s not. I’m just—”
“Doing your job,” Heather said, completing what I guessed was my oft-repeated reply to any praise she tried to give me. But it was true. No cop did what they did to be important, to be a hero. Not the good ones anyway. We did it because it was the job we signed up for. To serve and protect. The exception being that some of us took it more seriously than others.
“Well,” Heather continued, “you at least have to admit you’re doing a damn good job at doing your job.”
I raised my shoulders.
“Flint, please,” she said. “You’re really going to shrug that one off?”
“Heather, listen. You know me. You know I don’t care what the mayor thinks or anyone else in the department.”
“That’s because you have authority issues.”
“Do not.”
“Oh, right. What was I thinking? You just love taking orders blindly, being another random cog in the system.”
“I’m a handsome cog,” I said, winking over the rim of my mug.
“Screw you, Flint Reed,” she said with a girlish grin.
“I wish you would.”
She ignored me and took another sip of her coffee. “Let’s think this through, shall we?”
“No, not again—”
“Let’s make a list.” She was counting on her fingers. I hated when she did this. “You made detective faster than anyone else in the history of the force. You’ve had more arrests than any other detective in the precinct. And you’ve had commendations from both the commissioner and the mayor. Then, to top it off, today is going to be the culmination of two years of work.”
“Don’t jinx it, babe.”
“Come on, you’ve got these guys.”
“You don’t know that.”
She put her mug down a little too forcefully, causing some of the coffee to spill out. “Why won’t you let me just celebrate you?”
“Celebrate me? Because I haven’t done anything yet.”
“Haven’t done anything?”
Dammit. Now she was pissed.
“So what was the last decade-plus, then? What were all the sleepless nights spent waiting for you to come home, wondering if tonight is the night I get the knock? That was all over you doing nothing?”
The knock was code for getting the news that I’d been killed in duty. Sometimes, she talked about it so much, I wondered if she wanted it to happen.
“Come on, that’s not fair, Heather.”
“Not fair? Not fair?” Temper flared in her eyes and I realized that I’d said the wrong thing.
Sometimes her temper was worse than mine.
“Not fair is having you so immersed in your work that you forget to enjoy what it affords you… that you forget about everyone else around you.” Her voice slapped out at me, stoking my own anger.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m just saying—”
“What’s that supposed to mean, Heather?”
“It means that I just wish you would be more honest about the good you do, and that you would be a little more present with me.”
“Present?”
She nodded, lips pursed.
“Gods, Heather. Everything I do is for you. The promotions, the bonuses. This house. All of it.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Dammit, yes it is.”
“No, it’s not. You do it for something else.”
“Oh yeah? Like what, then? Why do I go out there and risk my life every godsdamn day?”
“You hate them.”
I hesitated. “I hate who?”
“Bullies. Bad guys. You hate people who take advantage of others because when you were a kid—”
“Shut up, Heather.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?”
“Gods,” I said, running a hand over my face. “Why’d you have to go there?”
She stood up. “Don’t you dare tell me to shut up!”
“Sit down,” I said, my voice growing softer as hers grew louder.
“Don’t you tell me what to do, Flint Reed!”
I mustered all the authority I could without raising my voice. “Heather, sit down.”
She froze.
I pointed at the seat, then looked in her eyes. “Maybe you’re right,” I said, “about not being present for you. And maybe you’re right about me hating bullies. But just don’t go there.”
She sighed, taking her seat again. “I’m… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I said.
“It’s just…” She paused, clearly searching for the right words. “If you’re going to keep doing this job, I want you to be honest about why you’re doing it, and I want you to be here for me. For our marriage.”
“I’m doing the best I can, Heather.”
“I know you are,” she replied. “But I need you to try harder.”
“Try harder?” I was being as present as I could. But apparently, that wasn’t good enough for her. “Maybe you want more than I’m able to give. Hells, maybe it’s more than any man can give.”
“That’s not fair, Flint. I should be allowed to voice my needs and what—”
“You’re allowed to do and say anything you want,” I replied, cutting her off. “But I can’t give you what I can’t give you, and if you’re not okay with that, then…”
“Then what?”
“Then maybe this isn’t going to work out.”
Silence filled the space between us. We’d never talked about this before. But we both knew it was coming, didn’t we? Hells, the fact that our marriage had lasted as long as it had was nothing short of a miracle. The majority of our friends had already been divorced at least once… some twice.
“Don’t you talk like that, Flint,” she said, staring down into her coffee. “Don’t you talk.”
“You want me to be honest? Then I’m being honest.”
She sighed then clutched her mug. I saw her shoulders shudder. Dammit, was she going to start crying? It wasn’t even seven thirty in the morning yet.
“Heather, listen…”
“You know who has a great marriage? Devin and Lisa.”
Wait, now we’re comparing ourselves to other couples? “Heather, you can’t possibly—”
“They’re pretty much perfect, don’t you think? And they’ve got kids, Flint. They’ve got the cutest damn kids you’ve ever seen. We’re gods-parents to them, for crying out loud.”
Were we going to talk about how we couldn’t have children again? I swore that this woman gave me migraines with her random-ass streams of thought. I couldn’t keep up. “Heather, where are you going with this?”
“There’s not much you wouldn’t do for Devin, is there?” she asked, sounding pretty accusatory. It was a trick question, I knew. But she looked at me like she wanted me to answer it.
“He’s my partner,” I replied. “Of course.”
“Even ‘back in the day,’” she said, making air quotes with her fingers. “You beat up Lessard for him when he tried hitting on Lisa.”
“Of c
ourse. They were dating. We were all in the academy together, and…”
“And you’d beat the crap out of anyone who tried to mess with Devin and Lisa even before they got married.”
“He was my friend.” She’d lost me now. Maybe I just needed to leave the house and get some air. “Where are you going with this?”
“Aren’t I your friend, Flint?”
I squinted at her, feeling like this was another trick question. “Excuse me?”
“Am I your friend?”
“You’re my wife.”
“Even more important.”
I let out a frustrated chuckle. “You’ve lost me, babe.”
“Fight for us, Flint,” she said, leaning across the table. “Fight for us like you fight for Devin and Lisa. Punch someone out. Get pissed. But whatever you do, fight for us.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds. We held one another’s gaze until my phone data pad chimed, reminding me to leave for work.
“I gotta go,” I said, standing up.
“Of course you do.”
Of all mornings to have a fight, I couldn’t believe it was today. Of course it was today. Although the argument wasn’t as bad as it could have been, this one went deep. She’d made me feel guilty, and that pissed me off. No one made me feel guilty about anything—because I wouldn’t let them. But Heather had found a chink in my armor. And the worst part was I couldn’t tell if she was right or not.
She wasn’t, I decided. I had been fighting for our marriage, every damn day. Fighting for our home, our lifestyle, our peace of mind. And if she couldn’t see that, then maybe she didn’t deserve me.
I walked around the table and kissed her on top of the head. Her hair smelled like shoreberry fruit.
“I love you,” I said. But she didn’t move.
I put my mug in the sink and then headed for the door. Tiny saw me cross the living room and waddled toward me.
“Good bye, pal,” I said, kneeling down to give him a quick scratch. “See you later.”