by K. C. Finn
Android See, Android Do
1.
Just because robots are possible, it doesn’t mean they are a good idea. Caecilius Rex doesn’t like the one that serves him lunch at Dartley Police Station. It always gets his name wrong, for a start.
“Kak-eel-yus,” says the bot, its digital face emulating a smile.
“No,” he says irately, holding the name badge up to its camera. “Try again.”
“Ka-silly-us,” it tries in its overly-pleasant tone.
“KAI-KILL-EE-USS,” Cae says in a slow, clear voice.
“Kai-keel-ee-uss,” says the android.
“That’ll do,” the detective replies with a sigh.
“What can I get for you today?” Asks the robot, its sleek silver arms opening in a welcoming gesture.
“I’ll have the daily special, and a coffee, white, two sugars,” Cae orders, but a hand comes to rest on the shoulder of his polo-neck sweater.
“Cancel that. You don’t have time for lunch.”
Cae swivels in his chair to see Kendra Nai, the newly-appointed Chief of Police, wearing a frustrated expression. The detective rises from his chair, dark brows furrowed over his bright blue eyes.
“Something up?” He asks quietly.
“You’re not going to like it,” Kendra replies. With a jerk of her head the pair walk from the canteen in silence until they reach a deserted section of corridor.
“You know how you said things were too quiet around here?” Kendra asks after checking that they are now alone.
Cae nods as they walk on. Since the raid on the Atomic Circus put half of Dartley’s criminal populous behind bars, the station has been left with very little to do but paperwork.
“Well things just got loud again,” Kendra continues. “Really loud.”
The duo reach an elevator and begin to wait behind a few other people. Cae knows by the look on Kendra’s face that she won’t say another word on the matter until they’re alone again.
“This is big, isn’t it?” He muses aloud.
The elevator arrives with a ping. The crowd boards, and Kendra hits the button for the third floor.
“Almost three months I’ve had this job,” she says. “And it’s been nothing but business as usual. I’ve done plenty of daydreaming about what our next big case would be.” She skews her mouth on one side. “But I didn’t expect this.”
Cae studies his friend with concern, because when Kendra is worried, he knows there’s something really worth worrying about. Her dark skin has grown to look more tired in the few quiet months since she took up the position of chief, but today she looks fresh and on edge, like the sharp soldier she once was.
“How old are you?” Cae asks. Kendra turns to him with a dark brow raised.
“Excuse me?” She remarks.
“I was just wondering,” he adds. Some of the other patrons of the elevator are watching them with interest. As they arrive at the third floor, Kendra and Cae are the only two to depart.
“I’ll be twenty-nine on New Year’s Day,” Kendra replies as they enter a busy corridor.
“I thought you’d have to be older than me,” Cae says as he follows her.
“Is there a point to your conversation?” Kendra says through gritted teeth.
“Not really,” he answers, trying to conceal his amusement. “I just thought I’d pass the time until we get where we’re going.”
Kendra makes a disgruntled sort of sound. “Then I guess I’m lucky that we’re here.”
Here turns out to be the Forensic Lab, outside which there is a barrier marked “Do Not Enter”. PC Michael Spinner stands beside the barrier, nodding to the chief as she approaches.
“I did just as you ordered, ma’am,” Spinner states. “No-one has been permitted inside.”
“Stop calling me ma’am,” Kendra says as she pushes past him. Cae follows her into the lab, where a pungent stench of spilled chemicals attacks his nose. The smell has a horrid metallic quality not unlike half-dried blood.
“Good grief,” he says, covering his mouth. “I need my gas mask on in here.”
Kendra doesn’t seem to notice the smell. Instead she points to the far corner of the lab, where a dead body sits crumpled under a workbench.
“I wanted you to be first on the scene before I report it,” Kendra explains.
“How thoughtful of you,” Cae replies through his fingers.
The detective approaches the body cautiously, saddened to recognise its owner as Li Ewan, the resident pathologist of the station. The corpse looks as though it has collapsed from a standing position, and Li’s head hangs down all too limply. Cae flexes his gloved fingers for a moment, then lifts the chin of the body.
“He’s been strangled,” Cae reports, exposing the purple finger-shaped striations around the man’s neck. “Do we know when this happened?”
Kendra huffs. “I was talking to him in here at ten thirty,” she muses. “And now he’s dead. I want to know how the strangler got in here. We should have been able to stop this.”
Cae’s pale jaw tightens. “When did you find him?” He asks.
“About five minutes before I called you,” Kendra answers.
“Talk to Spinner,” Cae says, “Tell him to put this place on lockdown; the killer could still be on the premises somewhere. Then you and I are going straight to security.”
“This is going to look bad for me,” Kendra says bluntly, glancing at the dead man.
Cae’s deep blue eyes fall on Li’s lifeless form too.
“This is no time to be worried about your image,” he remarks.
2.
Kingdom’s Faculty of Critical Military Research
Lachrymosa Base
Ice Territory
East Atlantic
To Whom It May Concern,
We are writing in recommendation of a former employee of the Lachrymosa Military Base for the position of Chief of Police at the following establishment:
Faculty: Dartley Police Station
Town: Dartley
County: Metropolitan Zone 6
District: North Europa.
The aforementioned employee, Kendra Nai, was in employment at Lachrymosa for a total of nine years and ten months, spending the final three years of her service in the role of Sergeant. In her time in this capacity Sergeant Nai displayed a natural predilection for leadership and the upholding of authority. Nai was selected as a prime operative in Lachrymosa’s Special Brigade for her bravery and candour. She is, in our personal opinion, a woman you can trust.
Please understand that Sergeant Nai’s dismissal from the Lachrymosa Military Base was purely a bureaucratic issue, and should in no way reflect upon her abilities or character. We can confirm that her military record has been confirmed to be clean to this date.
We the undersigned would never hesitate to recommend a candidate of such high calibre for this post. In our view there is no better person for the job.
Sincerely,
Professor Julius Cadinsky and Dr Howard Fowler
3.
Dartley Station is fitted with approximately a hundred and fifty security cameras. In the ten stories of the building there is no corner left unmonitored, no action without witness. Cae and Kendra wait impatiently for the camera technician to pull up the morning’s footage.
“I’ll run it through quickly from ten a.m.,” says the guard.
The trio watch the laboratory, in which Li Ewan is working happily and full of life. After a few moments Kendra appears in the room and begins talking. Even in fast-forward her manly stance is obvious; she watches Li with crossed arms, her expression continually dissatisfied.
Until the screen goes black.
“Wait,” Cae says, “What h
appened?”
The technician tries to scroll back into the footage, then forward, then back again.
“The camera must’ve gone offline,” he says. “It’s not so unusual in this place.”
“It is if the guy you’re filming ends up dead,” Kendra snaps.
“Right,” says the guard fearfully. “Sorry chief. I’ll pull up the outside corridor.”
Cae watches again, more intently this time, as they focus on the door to the lab. Sure enough Kendra enters the room as she did before, and a few minutes later some cleaning robots go in with a small trolley. Some time passes until Kendra leaves the room again, shortly followed by the cleaners.
And then they see him.
“That’s our man,” Cae exclaims as he sees a thin, dark-haired figure in a maintenance uniform entering the lab with his back to the camera. Ten minutes-worth of footage flicks by quickly, then the man re-emerges from the lab, deliberately turning his face from the camera’s direction. He slips away swiftly.
The footage ticks on until Kendra and Spinner arrive at the lab, carrying three coffees. They enter and depart again almost instantly, Spinner racing off with Kendra flinging her arm out in an aggressive way.
“That’s when I told him to set up the barrier,” Kendra says.
“Take it back to the intruder,” Cae says to the technician, who obeys instantly. They freeze on the maintenance man’s half-turned face. Cae’s sharp blue eyes narrow on the frozen image. “I don’t recognise him,” he adds.
“A skinny maintenance man? Most of the non-officers around here are pretty fat,” Kendra observes. The technician makes an offended sort of face that she doesn’t notice. In all fairness, he is on the portly side.
“Give us a print-off of this guy,” Cae says. As the technician begins to oblige, Cae leans down to meet his eyes with a serious look. “And let’s keep this quiet for now,” he warns. “I don’t want other people getting ideas about my case.”
The guard nods solemnly. “Sure detective,” he says quietly, handing Cae the image from the printer.
The duo exit the camera room and begin the long trek back to Cae’s office. He studies the picture fervently as they walk.
“Plan of action?” Kendra asks.
“You take this to maintenance and find out who he might be,” Cae starts. “I’ll see if I can get any sense out of those cleaning bots.”
“Why?” Kendra asks. “They left before our guy went in.”
“Did Li seem worried to you?” Cae questions, his eyes still searching the image as other people in the busy corridor avoid his path.
“Only when I told him to do his job properly,” Kendra replies.
“I want to know if he knew this guy was coming or not,” Cae explains. “If Li knew he was in trouble-‘
“Watch out!” Kendra says suddenly, but it’s already too late.
Cae picks himself up off the floor irately, his shoulder stinging from where some idiot has collided with him. He brushes down his black clothes and rubs his arm, looking back down for the culprit.
“Redd Richmond,” Cae groans as he sees the familiar, perfectly-groomed hairdo of the man on the floor.
“You ought to watch where you’re going, Rex,” says Redd, rising elegantly and dusting himself off. “This suit cost more than a year of your salary.” He is dressed in a sharp, olive green three-piece that matches his eyes, which are darting over the piece of paper he now holds in his hands.
“Give me that,” Cae grumbles, snatching back the image of the maintenance man.
“So rude,” Redd observes. He grins at Cae, looking him up and down. “I do hope you’re not looking for that chap on the page.”
Kendra narrows her eyes at the slick criminal. “And why would you hope that?” She asks.
“Well, well,” Redd says, eyes glittering over Kendra. “The new police chief. A pleasure to meet you at last. I’m-‘
“She knows who you are,” Cae cuts in. “Answer her question.”
“My reputation precedes me.” The petty conman gives them both a proud smirk. “I’m about to see my parole officer, you know,” he says. Kendra crosses her arms impatiently. “Now, if the chief of police were to poke her very lovely head in and say a good word or two about me…”
Cae sighs, knowing full well that you never get anything from Redd Richmond for nothing. He takes a look at Kendra, who is visibly unimpressed. She just nods.
“Fine,” he says. “The chief will support your parole bid. Now what do you know?”
Redd smiles at them. “A nice young man looking very much like this left the building ten minutes ago as I was arriving,” he says smoothly. “He was pulling off that ghastly maintenance smock; to my horror what he had on underneath was even worse.” Redd pulls a face of complete distaste. “He’s a mechanic,” he says, as though the word is sour in his mouth.
“Great, that’s really worth my time,” says Kendra flatly, but Cae is more apt to realise the value of the information. If the suspect has indeed already left the building, knowing his real occupation might be their only lead to tracking him down again.
“He was lucky, wasn’t he?” Redd asks in an amused tone. “To get out before that lockdown was announced over the tannoy a moment ago?”
Cae looks right through the sardonic grin of the cheap criminal as his mind begins to wander. Perhaps luck has nothing to do with it.
4.
Conducting an interview in a very large broom cupboard is not an easy business, but the androids that see to the cleanliness of Dartley Police Station are not programmed to stop their duties. If the entire city was on fire, they would go on laundering uniforms, polishing interview tables and dusting blinds, quite unperturbed until they started to melt from the heat. Cae has heard it said that when they have no work left to do, the robots re-organise the kitchens in the middle of the night, much to the annoyance of the station’s head chef.
The current team consists of two bots known to the staff as Nag and Boa. One model is older than the other, so Cae tries his questions on Boa, the eldest, first.
“You cleaned the Forensic Laboratory today Boa, is that correct?” He asks.
“Yes sir,” replies the deep, male programmed voice. “From the period of ten forty-one until eleven hundred hours.”
“Can you recall the events of that period for me?” He says as clearly as possible.
“Of course sir,” says Boa, folding regulation lab coats into neat little piles. “Nag and I entered the vicinity with the cleaning trolley. We proceeded to polish counters one and six, which were clear. We were instructed by Doctor Ewan to leave the other counters untouched. He was engaged in an important task. Then we began washing the-‘
“Wait,” Cae interrupts, “What important task?”
“Blood sample testing, sir,” says Boa.
The information makes sense to the horrific smell of the smashed bottles of fluid at the crime scene.
“What was he testing for?” Cae asks.
“I do not know sir,” Boa replies. The android finishes his business with the lab coats and begins loading the cleaning trolley.
“Skip forward for me a little,” Cae says. “The chief of police left the lab whilst you were cleaning. What was Doctor Ewan doing after she left?”
“He continued sampling,” Boa answers simply. “And he answered a short telephone call.”
Another lead. “Can you repeat the conversation for me?” Cae presses.
“Allow me to access the memory,” Boa says. “One moment please.”
But even as the robot is speaking it begins pushing the trolley out of the cupboard, and Cae has to follow the bot down the hallway as he recalls the information.
“Doctor Ewan said only one thing on the telephone sir,” Boa says. “He said ‘No, I don’t have the results yet. I’ll call you back when I do’.” The robot makes an eerily good emulation of Li’s feeble voice.
“And what happened after the phone call?” Cae continues, dodging the
wayward steering of the cleaning trolley as he keeps up with the android’s inhuman pace.
“Doctor Ewan returned to his work,” Boa replies. “Until the abort speech function.” The last three words come out in a much more mechanical tone than Boa’s usual voice program.
“Wait,” Cae says urgently. “Until what?”
“Until the arrival of the abort speech function,” Boa tries, falling victim to the same problem once more. Quite uncharacteristically, the android stops walking for a moment. “I’m sorry sir,” it says. “There seems to be an error in my information bank.”
Cae turns to the other robot, which appears to be awaiting orders from the more senior bot.
“Nag,” he says. “Can you tell me what Boa’s trying to say? What was it that interrupted Doctor Ewan’s work?”
“Certainly sir,” says Nag. This bot is smaller and a little more sleek than Boa, and it speaks with the programmed voice of a young girl. “Doctor Ewan was interrupted when the abort speech function appeared from inside the abort speech function.” Nag makes a funny mechanical sound, like a whirring fan. “I appear to have a malfunction too sir,” it replies plainly.
“We must report to maintenance,” Boa orders, and at once the robots abandon their trolley in the middle of the busy corridor. They march at a gallop away from Cae, who watches them go with interest.
“So must I,” he mutters, following them slowly.
When he arrives at the maintenance office the speedy bots seem to have already been there for quite a while, and are deep in conversation with a man Cae knows only as Gus. The detective is pleased to find that Kendra is there too, holding the image of the maintenance man in her dark hands.
“No joy,” she says as soon as she spots Cae entering the office. “The guy’s an imposter all right. These fellas didn’t even see him down here today.”
“Then where did that uniform come from?” Cae asks.
“Please sir,” says Nag from behind him. Both Cae and Kendra turn to the bot. “Uniforms are our responsibility. If there is any query I can be of assistance with, please let me know.”
“Is there a maintenance uniform missing?” Kendra asks.
“One moment,” says Nag, “I am accessing my inventory.”
Kendra waits tensely, but Cae can already guess what’s coming next.
