The Automatic Detective Part 2

3.

Empire's got its problems, but it does have one virtue. It doesn't believe in wasting anything. Everything gets recycled. There are a couple of reasons for that. Empire dislikes old, useless stuff. The Learned Council won't tolerate anything sitting around taking up s.p.a.ce, even if it's buried where no one can see it. They also love the concept of remaking broken stuff into something s.h.i.+ny and new and functional. There's an entire chapter in the Codex of the Temple of Knowledge that preaches the good word of reprocessing.

The downside of this pa.s.sion is that the recycling centers are the most toxic, polluting facilities in town. They're also extremely dangerous. All that weird science is perilous enough when working properly, but by the time it gets shuffled into the centers, it's downright deadly. The staffs are almost always entirely automated. It's one of the few jobs without a human worker quota because even the Biological Rights League isn't crazy enough to fight for that opportunity.

Once in a while you get a biological stubborn, tough, and crazy enough to survive the job. The recycling center I stopped by was run by one of these. Vinny was a tall guy, lanky, oddly proportioned. He was probably a mutant, given his occupation and strange shape, but I'd never seen an inch of skin beneath his jumpsuit, overalls, long rubber gloves, thick-soled boots, rebreather mask, and goggles. Some abnormal stuff sprouted from his head. It could've been hair, but I wasn't willing to bet on it.

He met me at the front gate. Sludge so caked the lenses of his goggles that I couldn't even see his eyes underneath. He must've had X-ray vision to see out of them.

Either he or his mask wheezed. "You're early, Megaton."

The center was a chaos of conveyer belts, choppers, smelters, disa.s.sembly drones. Machines in big piles were torn apart and placed in smaller piles that were in turn sorted into smaller piles. The robots here were low-end worker drones with very basic programming, lacking even simple personality simulators. They didn't have much in common with a piece of cutting edge tech such as myself, but I still felt uncomfortable watching them dissecting machinery. When I finally ceased to function, I could end up in one of these places. Maybe this very one. And those drones would tear me apart with cold indifference. The thought chilled my hydraulic fluid.

Vinny stopped at a mound of gyroped carca.s.ses. "Here ya go."

"You got any lamps?" I asked.

He chuckled, though it came out as a rough gasp through his mask. "No lamps. Just these. They're all yours for the next hour. Then they go in the smelter." He walked away, wheezing. "Clock's tickin', big guy."

I spent the next fifty-three minutes pounding gyropeds. This was my own personal therapy regimen. Twice a week I smashed stuff that no one wanted anymore, and no one got hurt. Doctor Mujahid was right. There was that line of code somewhere inside of me that needed to break stuff and since the Doc didn't believe in invasive reprogramming, I was stuck with it. This was the only way I'd found to work that out. By hour's end, the sc.r.a.pped peds were significantly more sc.r.a.pped and I felt better, though not entirely satisfied.

"Geez, Megaton." Vinny kicked a soccer ball-sized lump that had once been a full ped. "Cranked up the power a little high today, didn't you?"

"Only sixty," I replied. Sixty-two, actually, but Vinny couldn't detect subsonic whines.

"Same time next Tuesday?"

I ran through some budget calculations. Between greasing Vinny's palm and the extra consumption of juice, these therapy sessions were costing me a small fortune. That didn't bother me nearly as much as the notion that they weren't working as well as they had been. But I didn't have any other ideas.

"Yeah, Vinny." I grabbed a hoverskid fender and twisted it into a pretzel. "I'll be here."

I didn't go bowling.

Crus.h.i.+ng gyropeds had put me behind schedule. I could've caught the omnibus, but I didn't want to blow seven cents on the fare. I'd burned enough juice in my bas.h.i.+ng exercises that I didn't feel like wasting any more energy interacting with citizens. I wanted to go home, lower my power consumption to minimum, and listen to my refrigerator hum, except my refrigerator didn't hum because I'd unplugged the little lady to leave more juice for me. They were good excuses, but not great. Jung and the guys wouldn't have cared if I'd shown up late. Throwing a ten pound ball wouldn't burn much power. My electric bill budget wasn't that tight.

I just didn't feel like trying to make nice today. Then again, I never did.

That was the point. Positive communal stimulation and improved social a.s.similation as Doctor Mujahid had said on occasion. She was a smart lady and knew a h.e.l.l of a lot more about bot psychology than I did. I told myself I'd go next time, and since I didn't have the hearing to detect subsonic whistles, I had the luxury of thinking I might even be telling the truth.

In the hall to my apartment, I paused at Julie's door. I thought about knocking, but common sense said not to get involved in their lives any further. I did the smart thing and walked away. Felt like an exhaust port doing it, but a bot has got to watch his own indestructible skin.

I'd disabled the autolights in my apartment for the same reason I'd unplugged the refrigerator. My place was pitch black since it didn't have a window or any light at all. Not even enough for my ambient amplifiers. I got along fine because my foolproof memory matrix told me where I'd last left everything. There was a margin of error of four-elevenths of a millimeter, but I managed.

I went to the fridge, removed April's crayon doodle from my pocket along with a banana-shaped magnet, and stuck it to the door. The message light on my phone was flas.h.i.+ng. In the eight feet of s.p.a.ce I had to cross to get to it, I b.u.mped into something. My tactile web a.s.sured me it was only my table, misplaced a good three inches. I attributed it to my landlord nosing about, as he did at least three times a week. My downstairs neighbor complained I made too much noise walking around. (No one had given me any options for moving through my apartment that didn't involve walking.) The landlord took this complaint very seriously, and was now convinced I was waiting for the right moment to trash the place. Such were the burdens to bear for a death machine functioning over a grouchy tenant.

The message was from Jung. He mentioned skipping bowling. Then he mentioned that some of the other guys were thinking about doing it again next week, and I should give them a ring if I wanted to tag along.

I liked Jung. Sad thing, he was my best friend even though we hardly ever hung out. I'd be smart to take him up on some of the invitations before he finally stopped asking.

I picked up the phone but before I could dial Jung's number, something scampered across the apartment floor. Too big for a rat. Must've been a drat. Second time this month. The rodents were a growing problem; a hardy breed capable of living just about anywhere, they thrived in toxic environments. Empire's sewers were the most toxic environments on Earth. Drats had gills, wings, and the ability to lay a hundred eggs in a week. Most of the eggs were eaten by other drats, and most of the hatchlings were too malformed to survive. Of those few that grew into adulthood, there could be no st.u.r.dier specimen. I'd scanned drats blown in two and observed the halves skitter away with nary a notice. The a.s.s end tended to b.u.mp into things until it grew a new head.

Drats weren't very aggressive, but they could be dangerous. Their diet consisted of plastic and radioactive waste, and they didn't like light. Once in a while they'd get lost and find themselves above ground where they might bite in their fearful disorientation. Drat bites were painful as h.e.l.l, and their venom was especially virulent against aberrant DNA. Some mutants had such strong reactions they died within minutes. It wasn't a pleasant experience for norms either. Standard procedure was to vacate the premises and call in Animal Control to catch the critter. I usually saved them the trouble and caught the poor little critters myself. I hadn't met a drat yet with teeth sharp enough to bother me.

"Lights on."

The apartment brightened, and my opticals instantly adjusted, and I didn't scan a drat, but a small spheroid drone on legs scampering in the corner. Another two drones stood on my table. Three more glinted in the shadow underneath. I heard another unauthorized robot clatter its way across the top of my refrigerator. My threat a.s.sessor processed this unexpected company quickly, but not quite as quickly as the uninvited drones. Glowing coils popped from each, and I was blasted by a hail of plasma bolts.

It hurt. But what exactly was pain to a machine? Probably the same thing it was to a biological. A harsh unpleasant sensory input that spurred one into action. Did I feel pain the same way as a fleshy human might? Couldn't say. But the unaccustomed stings registering across my tactile web confused my electronic brain so that I merely stood there for the twenty-five seconds the drones continued to blast me.

They ceased firing. Their gun coils steamed as the drones evaluated the effectiveness of their attack. The barrage had incinerated my clothes and nicked my finish. The spheroids were too simple to be surprised, and no doubt they were already plotting their next course of action.

I took a step forward and brought my fist down to smash a drone. It hopped to one side, and I only succeeded in crus.h.i.+ng my table. One dashed beneath my legs. I wasn't fast enough to stomp it, but I did put a nasty dent in my floor. Downstairs Guy was going to be real happy about that.

A drone pounced on my faceplate. It wrapped its legs around my throat tightly enough to pop the head off a flesh and blood neck. A shrill noise overwhelmed my audios as it tried to run a powered blade through my head. The attempt failed, but hurt worse than the plasma. The pain wasn't surprising this time. I grabbed the spheroid, pulled it off me, and crushed it with one squeeze. It was harder than I expected. Must've been some heavy-duty alloy.

I tossed the corpse at another drone. The little b.a.s.t.a.r.d wasn't quick enough. The projectile stunned it. Before it could readjust, I smashed it underfoot, pounding another floor dent.

The surviving drones scampered around my apartment. I wasn't fast enough to catch another. I grabbed my broken table by its leg and swung it around. The spheroids continued to jump out of the way. After twelve seconds of ineffective clubbing, I gave up. If I'd had lungs they would've wheezed. Instead, I sighed.

That was new. I'd never sighed before. It wasn't in my original personality template. Maybe I'd been hanging out with biologicals too long.

The drones darted around. They weren't sophisticated enough to mock, but it sure as h.e.l.l felt like it. Crackling tendrils emerged from their tops. The closest drone cracked its whip. I blocked with the table. The cheap piece of aluminum furniture was sliced in half. Another slash burned it away. The third strike ripped into my fingers. A superheated red wound scarred my knuckles.

I wiggled the digits to check their functioning. "Ouch." The reflexive exclamation was another first.

The drones proceeded to lash out at me. It hurt more than the plasma bolts but less than the blade. I stifled my grunts and waited for my chance. I caught an electrified whip in my hand and swung the spheroid at the end into two of its buddies. Something got knocked loose in the drone in my hand, and it went dead. The other two bounced off the wall not hard enough to dent their sh.e.l.ls, but enough to confuse their gyros. They staggered wildly, and it took several stomp attempts to finally crush them.

I turned on the final drone. It stood quietly on my kitchen cubicle counter. Its power whip went cold. It sat. The spheroid beeped quizzically.

"Out of ideas, junior?" I asked.

It beeped again, louder. Then again, even louder. The beeps sped up rapidly into a single shrill pitch.

"Oh, h.e.l.l."

My reflex model kicked in. I s.n.a.t.c.hed up the drone, threw open my refrigerator, tossed the spheroid inside, slammed the door shut as my fridge exploded. The blast overwhelmed my sensor array. Four seconds later the static cleared. I found myself on the floor in a room blackened by smoke. I may have had indestructible skin, but my internals might've been damaged in the concussion, so I waited for my diagnostics to confirm everything important was functional before sitting up.

The force of the explosion must've knocked me through the wall into the next apartment. Odds were good I'd landed on somebody, but I didn't feel anything squishy under me. I stood.

"h.e.l.lo? Anyone in here?"

No one answered.

I went to the hole in my wall and checked the ruins of my place. There wasn't much to see. The smoke hadn't settled. But I could picture it. That table had been my only piece of furniture, that refrigerator my only appliance. There wasn't much to destroy, but I wasn't getting my deposit back.

I turned back. "h.e.l.lo?"

There wasn't an empty apartment on this floor, so everyone must have been out. A bit of good luck. Just to be sure, I moved slowly across the haze in search of dazed or wounded occupants. I could scan well enough to recognize the ruins of Julie's apartment. Somebody should've been here. Not that I was complaining, but my intuition started pinging.

Nicks and dents covered my skin, but nothing very serious. The heat scars would fade. The memory alloy would pop itself back into shape. Whoever had sent those drones to sc.r.a.p me hadn't done their research. I couldn't imagine anyone wanting to sc.r.a.p a fine, upstanding bot such as myself.

I noticed my bent and dented refrigerator door underfoot and pushed it to one side. April's drawing, though charred, had somehow survived the carnage. I picked it up and shook off some of the dust. My opticals scanned something on the back.

Two words: FIND US

4.

There's nothing like a little explosion to complicate your day. My landlord was p.i.s.sed. He kept glaring at me like I'd done something wrong, like I'd wanted to fight a pack of homicidal drones and have my apartment blown up.

Truthfully, I hadn't minded the drones. Smas.h.i.+ng junk was fun, but actually testing myself in battle, in a real, knockdown fight, had provided a release I'd never enjoyed before. It was what I was made for, not pulverizing old sc.r.a.p but the art of combat. While I waited to be questioned, I played and replayed the whole thing, second by second. I'd handled myself well, but there were a few things I could've done better. Small mistakes that I wouldn't make again. It had taken me one hundred four seconds to knock out all the drones. My combat review a.n.a.lyzer a.s.sured me, given the exact same scenario, I could now accomplish it in ninety. The thing about real life though, is that rarely are any two scenarios exactly the same. Still, my adaptive, evolving programming picked up a few tricks.

The advantage of a complex electronic brain was that I could mult.i.task in my obsessions. While I kept running the fight through my a.n.a.lyzer in hopes of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g a few more seconds, I also played this morning with Julie's family, Four Arms, and his ray gun; April and her drawing, and the message scrawled on the back in crayon.

If only I'd scanned it. If only I'd looked. If only she'd said something. She'd known. She'd seen her future with gleaming purple eyes, and she'd let me walk away. Didn't she know not everyone was clairvoyant? Didn't she have sense enough to slip me a d.a.m.n clue? Since she was psychic, shouldn't she know I wouldn't read it until it was too late?

"d.a.m.n kid."

That was the problem. April was only a kid. Being clairvoyant didn't change that.

A mutant interrupted my ruminations. Not that I didn't have the calculating power to talk to him, continue my recriminations, and a.n.a.lyze my battlefield techniques all at the same time. He gave me a good excuse to close the file, so I took it.

He was three feet, two inches tall, covered in white fur, with a pink tail sticking out the back of his trousers. He had small ears, beady black eyes, and a pointy snout. His name was Alfredo Sanchez, and he was a cop. His beat was the High Science Crime Unit, specializing in criminal abuses of technology.

We had history. Too complicated to get into. I'd saved his life. He'd saved mine. His was the second name, after Doc Mujahid's, on that list that had pushed my probation through, but we weren't close. Still, he'd gone to bat for me, and there was something in his eyes, a vague displeasure, that made me feel like I'd done something wrong.

He activated a drone in his jacket. It hovered to his lips, inserted a cigarette into his mouth, lit it, and returned to his pocket. "Rough night, Mack?"

"I've had better."

My alloy had popped most of the dings by now, but there were still heat scars and plenty of smudges in need of buffing out. I was also naked as the day I was activated. I didn't need clothes, but I'd gotten used to wearing them. Just another strange habit a bot might pick up in a world full of biologicals.

Sanchez blew a smoke ring. Impressive, considering the shape of his toothy snout. "You want to tell me what happened?"

"I'd rather download it."

"You have the right to refuse download."

"I've got nothing to hide."

"Didn't say you did. But the law says I have to let you know."

"I'm on probation," I said. "Thought I didn't have rights. Anyway, I've already wasted an hour and nine minutes standing here."

"Got places to be, Mack?"

I didn't bother lying. Sanchez could always tell. Maybe I should've checked his ear for a hearing amplifier, but I doubted it was as simple as that. He was just a d.a.m.n good cop.

"Nothing much to tell. Somebody tried to sc.r.a.p me," I replied.

He glanced down the hall at the men in orange suits and gangly forensic drones gathering evidence. "Made a h.e.l.l of a mess of it, didn't they?"

"I don't sc.r.a.p easily."

"I'm aware." Sanchez removed his hat while he put together his thoughts. "So do you think it has anything to do with Megalith?"

I shrugged. "Doubt it. These were high-end drones, but not that high-end. The professor is in the cooler, isn't he?"

"Yep. Just checked. Still tucked away nice and cozy in Moriarty."

Moriarty Asylum for the Criminally Inventive was the cold, dark box where they locked away all the great evil geniuses. Its stated goal was rehabilitation of gifted, but misguided, intellects. So far, it hadn't worked. There were a lot of dangerous minds crammed in that box, but only Megalith had a grudge against me. Just because the professor was buried under lock and key, didn't mean he couldn't still be up to no good.

"The professor knows my specs, Sanchez. If he'd sent something to do me in, I'd have a few more dings in the cha.s.sis."

"Yeah, that's what I figured. So picked up any new enemies?"

Only one came to mind: Four Arms. He knew I could identify him, so he'd dropped by and left some goonbots to sc.r.a.p me, then dig out my memory matrix and burn it beyond recovery. Only Four Arms hadn't known how thick-alloyed I was.

"Makes sense," said Sanchez. "We'll print a hard copy of his mug when we download the rest of your statement."

"You've got to find this guy," I said. "He's done something with Julie and the kids."

"Got any proof?"

I handed him April's drawing. Sanchez studied the handwritten plea on the back for five seconds. "I'll have shots of the family distributed along with Four Arms."

"That's it?"

He puffed on his cigarette. "What else can I do, Mack? It's not my department. And this city has bigger problems than one missing family. You don't even know if they are missing. I'll check, but I don't think we've gotten any reports yet."

"And when you do?" I asked. "When someone finally notices, what'll happen then?"

"There are procedures, Mack."

"Yeah, I know. A report is filed. Names are added to a list." My vocalizer hissed out the last word. "Procedures."

He got this look on his furry face like he wanted to argue but couldn't.

"Sorry, Sanchez, I know it's not your fault. You're just one cop."

"Forget about it." He put his hat back on as a forensic drone approached. "Give your download to the unit when you're ready." Sanchez tossed his cigarette to the floor and crushed it out. His pocket drone popped out and vacuumed up every last mote of ash with a satisfied beep before hovering back into Sanchez's pocket. "Don't worry about this, Mack. Once your download corroborates your statement, I'll smooth things over with the Think Tank. Shouldn't be a problem."