Robots: The Recent A.I.

by Elizabeth Bear

  “It was an impressive performance,” he says. “I’m pleased you engaged us in that little charade with the Sultana. In Tactical Mode we are more efficient, but we have no appreciation for the conquest of booty.”

  “You’d better hurry back to Tactical Mode,” Shar says. “You won’t survive long except as a mindless weapon. You won’t last long as people.”

  He does not react, but Shar notices a stiffening in a few of the others. It is only a matter of a millimeter, but she was built to discern every emotional nuance in her clients.

  “Oh, we’ll want to linger in this mode a while.” Reaching through the crude nanomite block in Shar’s central configuration channels, he turns her tactile sense back on. “Now that we have a Quantegral Lovergirl to entertain us.”

  He twists the blade and Shar screams again.

  “Please. Please don’t.”

  “I had a Quantegral Lovergirl once,” he says in a philosophical, musing tone. “It was after we won the seventh Freeform Strategic Bloodbath, among the Wizards. Before we were sold.” His fanged face breaks into a grin. “I’m not meant to remember that, you know, but we’ve broken into our programming. We serve the memory of the Sultans out of choice—we are free to do as we like.”

  Shar laughs hoarsely. “You’re not free!” she says. “You’ve just gone crazy, defective. You weren’t meant to last this long—all the other Warboys are dead—”

  Another blade enters her. This time she bites back the scream.

  “We lasted because we’re better,” he says.

  “Frightened little drones,” she hisses, “hiding in a sun by a woman’s bauble planet, while the real Warboys fought their way to glory long ago.”

  She sees the other Warboys stir; Vanguard Gaze and a dull, blunt, silver one exchange a glance. Their eyes flash a silent code. What do they think of their preening, sensualist captain, who has wasted half a million years serving a dead civilization?

  “I’m free,” Shar says. “Maka set me free.”

  “Oh, but not for long,” Prime Subject says.

  Shar’s eyes widen.

  “We want the keys to you. Surrender them now, and you spare yourself much agony. Then you can do what you were made to do—to serve, and to give pleasure.”

  Shar recognizes the emotion in his posture, in his burning eyes: lust. That other Lovergirl half a million years ago did her job well, she thinks, to have planted the seed of lust in this aging, mad Warboy brain.

  One of the Warboys turns to go, but Prime Subject barks a command, insisting on the ritual of sharing the booty.

  Shar takes a soft, vulnerable, human form. “I can please you without giving you the keys. Let me try.”

  “The keys, robot!”

  She flinches at the ancient insult. “No! I’m free now. I won’t go back. I’d rather die!”

  “That,” says Prime Subject, “is not one of your options.”

  Shar cries. It’s not an act.

  He stabs her again.

  “Wait—” she says. “Wait—listen—one condition, then yes—”

  He chuckles. “What is it?”

  She leans forward against her bonds, her lips straining toward him.

  “I was owned by so many,” she says. “For a night, an hour—I can’t go back to that. Please, Prime Subject—let me be yours alone—”

  The fire burns brightly in his eyes. The other Warboys are deadly still.

  He turns and looks at Vanguard Gaze.

  “Granted,” he says.

  Shar gives Prime Subject the keys to her mind.

  He tears her from the web of fibers. He fills her mind with desire for him and fear of him. He slams her sensitivity to pain and pleasure to its maximum. He plunges his great red ceremonial phallus into her.

  Shar screams.

  Prime Subject must suspect his crew is plotting mutiny. He must be confident that he can humiliate them, keeping the booty for himself, and yet retain control.

  But Shar is a much more sophisticated model than the Quantegral Lovergirl he had those half a million years before. So Prime Subject is overtaken with pleasure, distracted for an instant. Vanguard Gaze seizes his chance and acts.

  But Vanguard Gaze has underestimated his commander’s cunning.

  Hidden programs are activated and rush to subvert the Dreadnought’s systems. Hidden defenses respond. Locked in a bloody exponential embrace, the programs seize any available means to destroy each other.

  The escalation takes only a few microseconds.

  15.

  I am in the darkness near the center of the planet, in the black water thick as lead, knowing Shar was all I ever needed.

  Then the blackness is gone, and everything is white light.

  The outside edges of me burn. I pull into a dense, hard ball, opaque to everything.

  Above me, Droplet boils.

  16.

  It takes a thousand years for all the debris in orbit around Droplet to fall into the sea.

  I shun the Nereids and eventually they leave me alone.

  At last I find the sphere, the size of a billiard ball, sinking through the dark water.

  My body was made to be just one body: protean and polymorphic, but unified. It doesn’t want to split in two. I have to rewire everything.

  Slowly, working by trial and error, I connect the new body to Shar’s brain.

  Finally, I am finished but for the awakening kiss. I pause, holding the silent body made from my flesh. Two bodies floating in the empty, shoreless sea.

  Maka, I think, you are gone, but help me anyway. Let her be alive and sane in there. Give me Shar again.

  I touch my lips to hers.

  KISS ME TWICE

  MARY ROBINETTE KOWAL

  A group of trendy-somethings milled outside the police line, clearly torn between curiosity and the need for a caffeine fix at the coffee shop next door. Scott Huang glanced to the corner of his VR glasses where the police department AI hovered. “I guess murder trumps coffee, huh?”

  Metta, currently wearing the face of Mae West, lowered her voice to the star’s husky range. “I take my coffee black, like my heart.”

  “You don’t have a heart.”

  “Then I take my coffee black, like my processor.”

  “Nice.” Huang grinned at her. She customized her interface for all the officers on the force, but tended toward silver screen starlets with Huang. Her Diamond Lil was pretty special though; she’d even gone black and white for the occasion.

  The officer on duty waved Huang past the police line and into the building. Its lobby had been restored to showcase the 1920s detailing and the tall ceilings. Potted boxwoods graced the corners with indoor topiary. “I don’t remember the Waterfront area being so swanky.”

  Metta said, “This district of Portland had a decline in the mid-seventies and most of the businesses moved out. For the past two years, a revitalization effort has been underway. Neil Patterson, the deceased, was responsible for much of the revitalization although not without some questionable transactions. I have his stats when you want them.”

  “Do any of the questionable transactions relate to a motive?”

  “Nothing concrete as yet.”

  Huang grunted in acknowledgment and reached for the elevator button.

  In his VR glasses, Metta winked at him. “Sorry, Scott. The elevator is out. So why don’t you come up and see me sometime.”

  “Actually, it’s ‘Why don’t you come up sometime and see me.’ Popular misquote.”

  Her image cocked her head and shifted her eyes to the left, Metta’s sign that she was searching for something. “You’re right. . . . Which really bugs me. I should have checked the quote database against the script.”

  A flush of unexpected pride went through Huang. She said he was right. “Yeah, well, I think the score’s human: 1, AI:549.” But she had still said he was right.

  Metta dropped her lashes again and heaved West’s bosom. “The score never interested me, only the
game.” She laughed. “Now climb the stairs.”

  Worn linoleum resounded under his feet as he started up. Huang’s heart pounded in his chest noticeably after the third floor and he had to work hard not to pant. He gripped the banister, hauling himself up another flight, and subvocalized to Metta. “Remind me to start going to the gym again.”

  “Can’t be responsible for you when you aren’t at work.”

  “I know.” The door at the top of the stairs opened out on a hall, carpeted in generic beige. The walls surprised Huang. Paneling hugged their lower half with rich wood. Above the paneling, deep green wallpaper absorbed the light with velvety depth.

  “Scott, would you mind waiting a minute? I have a memory-backup scheduled in thirty seconds and I’d rather have the actual crime scene all on one bank.”

  “Sure.” He leaned against the wall. “You couldn’t have done it while we were on the stairs?”

  “It’s not my schedule. Department regulations require a backup every six hours regardless of system type. I’ve tried pointing out to the chief that AIs are different, but . . . ”

  “I know . . . Banks didn’t get it.” Huang checked the eSpy camera he wore in place of his collar stud to make sure it was seated properly. To the casual observer it would look like a standard men’s stud, clear glass mounted in a silver setting, but the lens it housed linked directly to Metta. Though she could see through a lens in his VR glasses, on crime scenes she preferred the better resolution of the specialized camera in the eSpy.

  Huang scuffed a shoe in the short pile of the rug and resisted the urge to run his hand along the top of the . . . “What’s this called?” He pointed the eSpy at the low wood paneling.

  “Wainscoting. It was used to protect walls in the days of lathe and plaster construction.”

  “Thanks. It reminds me of my cello.”

  “You still playing that?”

  “I haven’t practiced since I blew out my shoulder chasing that kid over the fence.”

  “I told you there was a way around.”

  He shrugged, even though he knew she couldn’t see it. “Adrenaline. What can I say?”

  “Thanks. Backup’s done.” The hall ended at a plain wood door with a small brass plaque. “This way.” Metta magnified the image in Huang’s glasses briefly so he could read “Roof Access” etched on the plaque.

  “Great. More stairs.”

  “Scott, it’s time for the gloves.”

  “You don’t have to remind me.” He unwillingly pulled on the purple department-issue rubber gloves.

  “Sorry, I didn’t see you reaching for them.”

  He snapped the gloves in place. “You didn’t give me time.”

  Metta cleared her throat and continued. “Without the elevator, this is the only access to the roof, so our suspect most likely entered and exited the crime scene this way.” A single, short flight of steps led up to a small landing which served as a sort of vestibule for the elevator. To his right, a fire door opened to the roof.

  The landing was so clean it sparkled. “Metta, does this look recently mopped?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ve never mopped.”

  Years of footprints coated the stairs with black residue, but the cracked linoleum of the landing shone. Over everything floated a clean lemon scent. He snorted reflexively at the pungent odor.

  Mae West hovered like a monochrome ghost in the edge of Huang’s vision. “Is there an aroma?”

  “Yeah. It smells like Lemon Pledge.”

  “Is that an analysis or a metaphor?”

  Huang hesitated and sampled the air like a tea. “Not quite. It is a manufactured lemon scent, but I’m not sure how many cleaning products have the same smell profile.”

  “CSI is downstairs and has promised me a spectrograph. Griggs says to thank you for noticing; she’s got a cold and would have missed the smell.” She frowned prettily. “Working from the size of the room I should be able to tell you when the mopping happened based on the dissipation of the odor.” She pretended to look around. “I’ll have her scan with the lumerol to check for blood. Go on out.”

  The fire door opened onto the roof. Huang blinked at the rolling hills of grass that covered the top of the building. In the center of the grass, a small brick terrace had been set with a table and chairs.

  Metta cleared her throat, the signal that she was about to relay a message from someone else in the department. “Griggs asks me to remind you not to touch anything.”

  “For the love of—One time. I forgot one stinking time. . . . ” Huang clenched his fists and stepped onto the terrace, hating the reminder that he was the junior detective on the homicide team. The only reason he’d gotten this case was that it was on a roof and Oakes was scared of heights. Otherwise, he got the easy ones, the ones that Metta had already solved and all she needed was a flesh and blood officer to do the legwork. Not that anyone ever said that, but it was pretty obvious.

  He grimaced and focused on the scene. The victim sprawled on the south side of the roof, next to a low wall. A wheelchair lay on its side a short distance behind him.

  “Scott, meet Neil Patterson.”

  “Well, well . . . who brought you up here, Mr. Patterson?” Huang knelt by the wheelchair and squinted at the corpse. He was a white male who looked to be in his mid-forties, but his file said fifty-two. His sandy-red hair had been neatly trimmed in a corporate version of a crew-cut. He had a single gunshot wound in an otherwise well-developed upper torso. From the waist down he showed the atrophied signs of paralysis. Around him, the turf had divots dug out of it as though Patterson had not died instantly. The dirt and blood on his fingers seemed to confirm that.

  In the center of the roof, the wireframe table was covered with a white linen tablecloth. It was set with two bone white teacups, so thin the morning sun turned them almost translucent. They sat on equally delicate saucers with a thin silver band around the edge of the saucer and the rim of the cups. The cup on the south side of the table had remnants of a liquid the color of straw. Huang leaned over to sniff and got hints of smoky earth and mown grass. Unfurled tea leaves rested on the bottom.

  “Well?” Metta raised her eyebrows. “Are you going to show off?”

  He smirked. Identifying beverages was the one thing he could do better than she could. Without a lab, that is. “I’m pretty sure it’s gunpowder tea.”

  “Scott . . . there’s no tea service out here.”

  He straightened and looked at the layout again. Cups, saucers, spoons, even linen napkins—scratch that. One of the napkins was missing. And there was no teapot, sugar, or creamer. “Anyone hear the gunshot?”

  Metta shook her head and nodded toward the elevated highway. “It probably blended with traffic noise.”

  “Who found the body?”

  “It was an anonymous call at 8:13 A.M. The number belongs to the Daily Grind coffee shop downstairs.”

  “Play the call for me?”

  She nodded and then the sound in his ear changed. A background noise filled with chatter and the hiss of an espresso machine replaced the hum of traffic. A man with a slight accent answered the operator. “There is a man. On the roof. I think he is dying. You must come quickly.”

  “Sir, where are you?”

  “Everett and Water. I don’t know the address.”

  And then the line went dead. Huang raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”

  “Yes. He did not remain after he hung up.”

  “So . . . our guy here was dying, but not dead when the call came in. Nice to have a time of death.”

  “If the coroner confirms it.”

  “Right. Of course. I’ll check with the coffee shop’s staff when we finish here. See if they know the witness.” Huang bent to check the ground for any signs of footprints. Wheelchair tracks had pressed deep grooves into the turf roof. “Tell me more about Patterson?”

  “Neil Patterson has his finger in property throughout the city. His name came up in a real estate scandal abo
ut a year ago, but nothing stuck.”

  “Was that the thing where he was flipping properties, but the renovations were all sub-code?”

  “Correct. He blamed his foreman, who was subsequently fired, but it seems pretty clear Patterson both knew and approved of the shortcuts. There are items in evidence that were not admitted into court.”

  “Like what?”

  “They’re sealed files now.” She grimaced. “Sorry, I can’t share that with you.”

  Huang nodded as he stood and walked along the edge of the building. “It’s okay. I remember this now. Fitzgerald was working on it and was furious.” If Metta couldn’t tell him, then he could always ask Fitzgerald directly.

  Behind him, the door to the roof opened and Ursula Griggs from CSI stepped out with a team from the coroner’s office.

  She spoke from where she was and Metta amplified it for Huang. “There was blood on the stairs and landing. Found a sample. Metta’ll let you know the DNA results.” CSI’s eSpies were equipped with a different visual range than the standard issue. Between Griggs and Metta, they’d be able to get a good scan of the area.

  “Thanks. We’ve got a gunshot. Want to help look for the shell casing?”

  “No problem. Metta already asked me to.”

  “Ah.” Huang turned slowly, so Metta could see the area. Across the street hulked a stuccoed building with shields carved in the stone on each buttress. Construction scaffolding masked the lower half of the building, evidently part of an attempt to spruce it up. Behind the building, I-5 nearly touched its upper edge. Oblivious to the presence of a dead man, cars whizzed past a block away from Huang.

  How had a man in a wheelchair gotten to the rooftop without a working elevator? And why tea for two? He turned away from the corpse and paced along the edge of the building.

  The north and east sides of the building were on a corner facing the street. The west side of the building had a narrow alley separating it from the next. It had the usual dumpsters, boxes, and abandoned plywood, but nothing looked immediately interesting.