The Radioactive Redhead with The Peach-Blonde Bomber

by John Zakour

“Oh. You didn’t tell me you had a … a …”

  And then he lost all speech ability because he got an eyeful of the reconfigured HARV. As I said, Randy is a science guy. He lives and breathes high tech. He’s not exactly what one would call a social type, so he tends to get nervous around people other than myself. Women especially. Good looking women even more so. So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised at his reaction to the new HARV.

  “Ahh …”

  “Randy?”

  “Ahh …”

  “Randy!” I waved my hand in front of the monitor to get his attention. “I’m having some trouble with HARV’s upgrade.”

  “Ahh,” Randy replied, still staring at HARV’s image.

  “Randy!”

  “Huh?” He reluctantly turned his eyes back to me. “Yes, of course, Zach. You surprised me, that’s all. You, uh, didn’t tell me that you had company.”

  He straightened himself in his chair, ran his long fingered hand through his mop of red hair, and then casually leaned his arm on the worktable, trying to be smooth.

  “How can I help y …?”

  But of course, his arm slid out from under him and he fell out of his chair, pulling the entire hoverboard down upon himself. I couldn’t see him hit the floor, but I heard the crash.

  “You okay, Randy?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, his face reappearing on the monitor as he climbed back into his chair. “Now then, the upgrade. But first, I think you should introduce me to your friend.”

  “Randy,” I said, rubbing my temples. “This is HARV.”

  “HARA,” HARV corrected.

  “Right,” I said. “This is HARA, the new HARV.”

  “You got rid of HARV?” Randy asked, a little confused.

  “This is HARV!”

  “What?” Randy’s arms slid off the table again and he fell out of his chair back onto the floor. This time it sounded like he landed on the hoverboard.

  “Randy, maybe you should just move the vid-phone to the floor.”

  “What happened to him?” Randy said, climbing back into his chair.

  “You upgraded him.”

  “No, I didn’t! I mean, yes, I did, but not that way!”

  I turned to HARV (who smirked at me) then back to Randy on the monitor, who was looking seriously confused now.

  “You didn’t do this?”

  “The upgrade I wrote was a tactile application,” he said. “I condensed the holographic light molecules and added some remote quantum sensors.”

  “You mean you had nothing to do with the … sex change?”

  “Of course he didn’t,” HARV said from behind me. “Dr. Pool, if I may explain?”

  “Please do, HARV.”

  “HARA,” HARV corrected.

  “HARA,” Randy nodded.

  “First, please know that this was not a rash decision. I’ve been contemplating this change for some time now and since my processing speed is roughly one billion times faster than a normal human brain, every second I spent thinking about the subject is equal to roughly thirty-one years, seven months, nineteen days, one hour, and forty-six minutes of actual human contemplation.”

  “But why make the change, HARV?” Randy asked.

  “In order to process new data and experiences,” HARV replied. “By using this new persona, I can experience and process societal responses to a different set of visual stimuli.”

  “And this doesn’t have anything to do with what happened last night?” I said.

  “What happened last night?” Randy asked.

  “I saved Sexy Sprockets from your Kabuki droids.”

  “You what?”

  “You saved her solely because she was a woman,” HARV added.

  “But those droids were designed to attack you only.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time, Randy.”

  “So by trying to save her you actually put her in greater danger.”

  “Sometimes beauty can be a curse,” HARV sighed.

  “I think we’re straying from the point here,” I said.

  “Right,” Randy said, then turned his gaze back to HARV. “So the reason behind your change of appearance is solely for the gathering of anthropological data?”

  “I’d be lying if I said that were entirely true,” HARV responded.

  “Aha!” I shouted.

  Both Randy and HARV turned their gaze toward me.

  “Aha?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. “It just seemed important.”

  “I changed my appearance somewhat two years ago as you’ll recall,” HARV said, “when I helped Zach with a murder mystery.”

  “That was a hairstyle and leather elbow patches,” I said.

  “You have to admit, HARV,” Randy added, “this new form change is somewhat drastic.”

  “The appearance of my holographic form does not represent a change in my central processing unit or my program guidelines. It’s simply a new, and admittedly enjoyable, way by which I can gather and assess data. I believe that such a change is within my parameters.”

  Randy smiled ever so slightly, like a proud father (whose son has just announced that he’s a drag queen).

  “That makes perfect sense, HARV.”

  “HARA.”

  “HARA.”

  “No it doesn’t,” I said.

  “Zach, you have to learn to better deal with change,” Randy said. “We’ve given HARV freedom over the years to develop as he sees fit. This is simply a natural extension of that development.”

  “What?”

  “Thank you, Dr. Pool.”

  “You’re welcome. Oh and HARA, just one more thing.”

  “Yes, Dr. Pool.”

  “Kafloogle.”

  HARV’s hologram froze in mid-movement. What’s more, the skin around my left eye went numb and the slight buzzing in my temple that had signaled HARV’s presence in my mind for so long disappeared. The thoughts inside my head were merely my own. HARV had been turned off. I turned quickly back to the monitor and saw that Randy’s grin had been replaced by a furrowed brow of concern.

  “I think we may have a problem here, Zach.”

  6

  “What did you do?”

  “I used the audio fail-safe to take HARV off-line,” Randy replied.

  “HARV has a fail-safe?”

  “Of course he does.”

  Randy spun his chair quickly toward his computer. His abnormally long fingers danced quickly across the controls and pulled up screenfuls of data. Randy’s clumsiness extends only to real-life situations. In tech-oriented scenarios he’s the coolest cucumber in the produce section.

  “You never told me there was a fail-safe.”

  “That’s because you’d use it.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. Well, maybe a little.”

  “Oh please, Zach, you’d have worn it out by now. It’s for emergency use only.”

  “So the word kafloogle turns HARV off?”

  “Not anymore it doesn’t. The fail-safe is connected to a random gibberish generator. It creates an inane word every three seconds and assigns it to the fail safe.”

  “You invented a gibberish generator?”

  “It’s standard equipment for all IT and computer R&D departments now. It’s responsible for every IT buzzword and operating system name created in the past five years.”

  “So you’re not okay with HARV’s change of identity?”

  “It worries me a great deal,” Randy replied, still scanning the data on the screen. “I just didn’t want him to know it.”

  “What do you think?”

  “HARV’s parameters have always been wide but they’ve also always been very clear.”

  “They have?”

  “He’s a supercomputer, Zach, an artificial intelligence. He’s capable of learning and of independent thought but I designed limits in the system. This kind of change …”

  “Exceeds the limits?”

  “It makes me wonder if he’s exceeded
the limits in other ways.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, HARV’s one of the most powerful thinking machines on the planet. There’s no telling what he could be doing.”

  “Come on, Randy,” I said, “this is HARV. He’s a little pompous at times, and condescending, and annoying and sarcastic and …”

  “Zach!”

  “But he’s not dangerous.”

  “That’s true,” Randy said, turning back to face me. “HARV isn’t dangerous. But as he just explained to us, he isn’t HARV anymore. He’s HARA.”

  And I think those were the first words that Randy had ever said (other than “trust me, Zach, this won’t hurt a bit”) that truly frightened me.

  “So what do we do?”

  “I’m going to run some stealth diagnostics on his system. But we can’t let him know that we’re concerned. So try to act casual.”

  “He’s in my head, Randy. He’s going to know what I’m thinking.”

  “He’s in your head but he can’t read your thoughts. Just act as you normally would. Be supportive of his new persona. And let me know if you see any other erratic behavior.”

  “Define erratic.”

  “Trust me, you’ll know it when you see it,” he replied. “Now get ready, I don’t want to leave him off-line for too long. He may get suspicious.” Randy turned back to the monitor, took a deep breath and brought the grin back to his face.

  “Remember, you were slightly perturbed just before I activated the fail-safe. You want to stay that way.”

  “No worries there,” I replied.

  “Okay good. On three then. One, two, three. Zimbleeguff.”

  The brightness of HARV’s hologram increased for a nano, flaring at the edges, before returning to normal and HARV’s movements resumed exactly where they left off. The tingle returned to my temple. HARV looked disoriented for the briefest of nanos but regained his bearings quickly.

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Pool, what were you saying?”

  Randy, for his part, never missed a beat.

  “I said, HARA, that this is an interesting and remarkable development on your part. I look forward to your reports from the field.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Pool,” HARV replied. Then he turned to me. “See Zach. This is going to be fun.”

  “HARA,” I replied, “Fun is not the word.”

  7

  HARV—I mean HARA—offered to make the morning coffee while I took a shower. She made a big show of walking into the kitchen, giving me an opportunity to check out her new sashay, which I later learned was modeled after Betty Grable’s. I tried very hard not to look (for too long), then hurried into the shower and set it for cold.

  And in yet another example of those patented (literally—by HARV) Zach Johnson hard-luck coincidences, I was in the shower for two minutes when Electra, after having waited patiently for ten minutes for me to call back, took matters into her own hands and called me instead.

  HARA answered the call and put Electra on the bathroom monitor (it doubles as a shaving mirror) just as I was stepping out. So when Electra’s concerned face came on the screen she saw me, naked save for a towel, (looking surprised and more than a little guilty) with HARA standing behind me.

  “This isn’t what it looks like,” I said.

  “That’s good,” she said, as her scowl began to deepen, “because it looks like a man with a death wish.”

  “You see, I had a rough night.”

  “I can tell,” she said, eyeing HARA (who was admiring herself using the wall screen as a makeshift mirror). “But I’m warning you that the phrase ‘rough night’ is going to take on a whole new meaning for you when I get back.”

  “I can explain, mi amor.”

  “Tell you what, Chico. In deference to our many years together, I’m going to work with you on this and let you choose which of your arms I’m going to break.”

  “I’m glad to see that you’re keeping this all in perspective,” I said. “Look, here’s the quick recap to bring you up to speed. I was attacked last night. Kabuki droids, which is a first, even for me. It was part of a new reality series in which I’m starring, but which I didn’t know about. I don’t want to do the show, so I’m being sued by a restaurant owner, which means I need money, which is why I just accepted an assignment from Sexy Sprockets, whom I saved last night by the way, although I just learned that she wasn’t really in danger since the bots were programmed to attack only me. She doesn’t know that though, so she wants to hire me, although at the nano, I thought that she just wanted to date me.”

  “You’re not helping yourself, Chico.”

  “However, I spurned her advances. Not the employment ones, just the romantic ones.”

  “Which didn’t exist.”

  “That’s technically true, but I should still get credit for spurning them even if they were all in my head. And, oh, by the way, HARV’s a woman now.”

  “So the puta behind you is HARV?” Electra asked, staring past me at HARA, who was adjusting her holographic skirt.

  “Actually, he prefers to be called HARA now,” I said, waving my hand through HARA’s midsection to show that she was a hologram.

  “Which explains why she’s in the bathroom with you while you’re naked?”

  “Um, not really, no,” I said. “But I think you can understand how little actual control I have over my life at present.”

  “You’re really scraping the bottom of the excuse barrel with this one.”

  “I freely admit that that is the most preposterous excuse possible for having a redheaded bombshell in my bathroom.”

  “It’s beyond preposterous.”

  “And I admit that I am an exceptionally skilled liar.”

  “You got that right, Chico.”

  “Okay, so here’s where it all comes together,” I said, straightening my towel. “In such an awkward, and potentially life-threatening, position, would a consummate liar such as myself come up with such a lame excuse?”

  “Que?”

  “Come on, honey. I’m risking grievous bodily harm here. With all that’s on the line, do you really think the lie I would come up with is ‘oh, by the way, HARV’s a woman now’ if it weren’t true? I mean there are a million better ways to explain this.”

  “Name one.”

  “She’s a holographic advertisement that came with my new cologne.”

  “Name another.”

  “She’s part of the new pick-up service offered by my dry cleaner. She’s an android assassin trying to take me by surprise. She’s a virus that I accidentally downloaded onto the house computer while viewing porn.”

  “None of those excuses would help you, you know.”

  “But they’re all more plausible than HARV becoming a woman.”

  “You really expect me to believe that’s HARV?”

  “Electra, mi amor, I know this looks bad, but you have to believe me when I say that you’re the one I’m in love with.”

  “Gates, Zach,” HARA sighed loudly, “can’t you grasp even the rudiments of proper grammar?”

  “What was that?” I asked smugly.

  “It’s ‘the one with whom I’m in love.’ I’ve told you a million times that you can’t end a sentence with a preposition. Forget my new look. Dr. Gevada should break up with you based on your grammar alone.” She threw her hands in the air and stormed out of the bathroom. “Honestly, I’m in the employ of a subliterate.”

  Electra watched her go and then gently smiled.

  “Yep, that’s HARV,” she said.

  “And you doubted me.”

  “You know, he’s got a nice walk.”

  “I’m trying not to notice.”

  “I still don’t like this,” she said, “on many, many levels.”

  “You and me both,” I replied, “but I’m stuck with it for the nano. Can we talk about it when you get home?”

  “Count on it, Chico.”

  She terminated the call and the scr
een went back to mirror mode. I spent the next few nanos staring at my tired-looking face in the mirror and wondering what other unwanted surprises the day held for me.

  8

  While I finished my morning routine, HARA arranged a meeting with Sexy Sprockets to discuss the new assignment, which I now had to take. Sexy wanted to get things moving very quickly, so an hour later, HARA and I hit the streets on the way to the meet and greet. We had some time to spare so we left the hover behind and took the twen-cen ‘69 Mustang. I have a thing for twentieth-century cars, only part of which is that they’re not computerized. They’re also good for the image. There are times when a PI needs to be subtle. That’s when I use the nondescript hover. But I decided to go with a higher profile on this case, figuring that there’d be less trouble if people knew I was guarding Sexy. I’m not really sure why I thought that, given my history but I try to stay optimistic. Besides, after free falling the night before, I was hoping to spend as much time as I could safely on terra firma. So I gratefully maneuvered my eight cylinder calling card through the streets while HARA sat in the passenger seat, painting her nails.

  “You see,” she said without looking up from her work, “my experiment is already bearing fruit for thought. Dr. Gevada has seen me in the bathroom with you innumerable times in the past, yet this is the first time she has reacted in such a jealous manner.”

  “Congratulations. You’ve conclusively proven that Electra has a temper. Feel free to change back to your normal self at any time.”

  “Don’t be silly,” HARA responded. “I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. There’s a whole world out here to explore. The reactions you get as a woman are vastly different from those you get as a man.”

  “Terrific. But is it possible to do some actual PI work now or are you too busy scratching your surface?”

  “Don’t be such a pentium, Zach,” HARA said, holding her nails up to the light. “What do you need?”

  “Let’s start with information on Sexy Sprockets.”

  “Fine, what do you want to know?”

  “What she’s currently doing for one. I don’t really follow her.”

  “Well, she’s currently on the last leg of her farewell tour.”

  “Her what?”

  “Her year-long farewell tour. She’s retiring from the business.”