Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel

by Judd Trichter

“Convince me otherwise.” She cracks an ice cube in her mouth. “But get on with it already. I’m low on juice.”

  They exit out the back and take the elevator to the garage. They drive up through the hills in Eliot’s car. They pass the homes that burned in the last rash of fires and traverse the roads still covered with dirt from a December mudslide. Floaters and drones depart from the station near the top. A pack of coyotes howls with the lust of a fresh kill.

  Eliot hops the tires over the broken curb and passes the entrance to the park. He drives over the weedy grass and pulls up to where the rusted scaffold twists around the ruins. He parks and walks to the passenger side to help Yoshiko from the car. The blind model shivers from the cold. The sound of the city grinds below.

  “What is this place?” she asks, clutching a shawl around her shoulders.

  Eliot guides her hand to the base of the first letter. She feels the broken enamel on the steel H. She runs her hands along the irregularities where the letter has been decimated by nasty weather, nasty people, and time.

  “It’s the Hollywood sign,” he tells her, but it doesn’t appear she knows anything about it. Probably never saw the damn thing, even when her boss was kind enough to lend her some eyes for a gig. Now, she follows the geometry on her own, running her hand over and along the surface.

  “We used to hide here.” He sits on a patch of weeds and takes out his drip. “We could be outside and together here and feel safe.” He takes a deep inhale. “The first time we met was at that bar and the last time we were together was here.”

  He listens to the city and waits for the drip to kick in. He waits for some emotion that will make him feel at this moment the way he used to feel when he was here with Iris. But Yoshiko makes it far more unsettling. She doesn’t lie by his side and cuddle and ask him to tell her about Avernus. Instead, she grabs onto the scaffold and hooks a high-heeled shoe onto a metal bar. Her dress ripples like a while flag in the wind as she climbs.

  “Do you realize,” Yoshiko asks, “that you’ve been talking about Iris all night and you haven’t asked a single question about me?”

  It’s true. Eliot hasn’t been a very good date. Then again, that was never his intention. For it to be a date, he would have to acknowledge that Yoshiko is her own person, something Eliot has so far refused to do.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, leaning back on his elbows and staring down at his shoes.

  “Are you,” she asks, “or are you apologizing in some half-hearted attempt to make me feel better?” She climbs a few more rungs up the scaffold. “You give the impression that you’re completely uninterested in me.”

  “That isn’t true,” says Eliot.

  “Oh, I don’t care.” She climbs another rung. “I’m not terribly interested in you, either.”

  The metal creaks beneath her as she climbs. Her black hair webs across her shoulders. Her white dress disappears against the enamel of the H.

  “Why’d you leave with me?” Eliot asks, his head light with drip. “Why’d you give me an hour?”

  “You said I was in danger.”

  “You are in danger. Jillian Rose intends to reconfigure you.”

  “As do you.”

  Her hand follows the uneven contours of the twisting bars spaced alongside the letters in the sign. She climbs fearlessly, showing no apprehension of the height or the condition of the scaffold supporting her weight.

  “I thought when I handed you the locket and showed you the places that had been important to us, it would awaken the memory of who you’d been. It either didn’t work or you’re hiding from me that it did.”

  “It didn’t.” Yoshiko turns her back to the sign and faces the lights of the city. “I don’t.” She stretches her arms along a horizontal bar and touches the cold steel to her naked back. “So I guess that means you’re going to kill me.”

  He listens to the city, to the brush, to the predators and the prey locked in their dance along the paths and gullies of the hills. “I have no intention of killing you.”

  “Only because you call it reconfiguring or reassembling or some other euphemism du jour.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “That puts you in a pickle.”

  She enjoys this, he thinks. Twisting the knife into this compassionate heartbeat broken since losing the woman he loves.

  “Were you telling the truth about Avernus?” she asks. “Would you take me there as I am instead of Iris?”

  “Would you really want to go?”

  “I think you should answer my question.”

  Eliot tries to think of a polite response, but why be polite when she has made candor the tone of the evening? Why not tell the truth to this spoiled modelbot who’s more bitter than her brothers and sisters working the frozen quarries and brothels of Europa?

  “No,” he tells her bluntly. “I would not take you to Avernus. Not as you are.”

  “Because you don’t like me.”

  “What have you shown me to like?”

  Yoshiko stands on the scaffold, four stories high with her hair blowing in the wind. Her expression is the same one Eliot saw on the roof of the Standard except that now her body seems suspended in space. The forces pulling her in opposite directions are of equal strength.

  “Seems I have two choices,” Yoshiko says flatly from the scaffold. “I can get reconfigured by Jillian Rose or I can get reconfigured by you. I don’t see much of a difference.”

  “The bot I’ll make you will be loved,” Eliot, the salesman always ready with a pitch.” “The bot Jillian Rose will make you”—he pauses to think of how to describe it—“you know more about her than I do.”

  Yoshi allows a shoe to drop from her foot and fall several stories before it bounces off the ground.

  “There is a third option.” She arches her back against the scaffold and opens her face to the clouds. “It is my body after all. I could sat to hell with both of you.”

  “Just to spite me?” She allows the other shoe to drop. “I won’t let you.” He sits up, ready to spring if he must.

  “Then you’re a murderer after all.”

  Her bare feet release the rung and her body cartwheels down the scaffold. She collides several times with horizontal beams before her spine cracks against a steel rod ten feet above the ground. Her weight tilts on the rod then falls downward, head first, but Eliot is there in time to catch her and spin her to the ground at the last moment protecting her head.

  Oil drips from her mouth. Eliot pats out the part of her dress burning from the sparks. Her collapsed chest stops the spinning in her engine. Yoshiko’s final act, her vengeful suicide, is, thank God, a failure. She didn’t succeed in destroying all her parts—at least not the one Eliot gives a shit about.

  NINETEEN

  An Unexpected Guest

  It’s a short trip from the Hollywood Sign back to his apartment. Few cars on the roads. He keeps the radio off and lets the auto-drive maintain the speed limit. Too much drip to trust himself with the wheel.

  Parked in his driveway, Eliot looks around to make sure his neighbors aren’t watching. He has Yoshiko’s body wrapped in a blanket. He rushes it into his apartment and lays it over Iris’s clothing beside her left arm on the living room floor. He closes the blinds and tells his deskbrane to play his messages.

  Beep.

  “Eliot, it’s Gita. Sounds like we lost Harris Farms. Let me know how we should handle this with the Mole … I mean, Erica.”

  Beep.

  “Namaste, sweetheart, sorry it’s been so long, but I’m only allowed one call a week. Anyway, you still coming to Avernus? The gods answered the Admiral’s call for rain so the crops are growing in beautifully. The sun is shining. Mother Earth is plentiful in her giving. And there are so many people here who want to meet you. Wait ’til you see the girls. Gorgeous! Anyway. Miss you. Love you. Say hi to your brother.”

  Beep.

  Eliot digs his old tool kit out of the closet and sets it on the coffee table.
He hasn’t worked on a bot since he was a kid tinkering with his old man in the garage. They used to make all sorts of things then. Insects and birds and baby dragons. It was his hobby before the drip became his hobby. Now, there’s a layer of dust on the kit, but inside, the tools are clean and sharp as they were the last time he used them.

  “The proper way to remove the limbs on your XR series android is with careful incisions and an understanding of how the XR is designed.”

  The man on the liquid screen, Joe the Trapper, wears a white lab coat and a ski mask as he hosts the loop. He hides his identity lest someone collect the price Lorca put on his head.

  “Tearing and chopping might be all right for the experienced carver, but unless you’re making snuff films, you’ll want to avoid causing any damage to the torso or limbs of your bot. For one thing, parts will lose their resale value if they need repair. For another, if any oil leaks into the main works of a component, it will make your bot as worthless as a screen door on a submarine. Now, let’s get started.”

  A toilet flushes in the apartment. At first Eliot thinks it’s the video, but then he notices a shadow moving beneath the bathroom door. He hears someone washing at the sink. He reaches into his kit and grabs the first sharp object he can find. The knob turns. The door opens. Eliot lunges at the backlit silhouette in the hall.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” says the younger brother. His pants are undone. A newsbrane in his hand.

  “Damnit, I coulda killed you!”

  Shelley looks at the small pair of scissors in Eliot’s hand. “Or worse, cut off all the tags from my clothing.”

  Eliot grabs a blanket off the couch and throws it on the floor to cover Yoshiko’s body. “What the hell are you doing here?” he asks as he shuts off the liquid screen.

  Shelley crosses to a chair and examines the antique laptop on Eliot’s desk.

  “I fell behind in my payments at the marina. I need the fee for the berth by twelve o’clock.”

  “How much?”

  “A grand? Or two?”

  “Top drawer.”

  “Thanks.” Shelley reaches into the desk and avails himself of the money. “And by the way, there’s a terminated bot on your floor.”

  Eliot throws himself facedown exasperated on the couch.

  “It’s not what you think,” He says into a pillow.

  “What do I think?”

  “She was kidnapped, chopped up, and sold for parts.”

  “That happens to bots.”

  “That doesn’t make it right.”

  “So you make things right?” Shelley asks. “Sir Galahad of Los Angeles. White knight to the bots?”

  Eliot wraps the pillow over his ears. He doesn’t want to listen. He doesn’t want to hear his brother remind him of his own madness.

  “Whose laptop is this?”

  “Better you don’t know.”

  Shelley reads the list off the screen. “Iris Matsuo. Hasegawa C-900. Head,—Jillian Rose Modeling Agency. Legs—Tucson Metal Solutions. Eyes—Blumenthal Promotions.” Shelley turns to Eliot on the couch. “Blumenthal the shylock?”

  “I suppose.”

  “And who’s Chief Shunu?”

  “Some outlaw on the Chumash Reservation.”

  “And what do you have so far?”

  “A head, a left arm, and a right pinky.”

  “Who has the right arm?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you don’t have every part of a C-900, she’ll never be the same.”

  “I know that, Shelley. You think I don’t know?”

  The younger brother pushes aside the laptop and glances down at Yoshiko’s body laid atop Iris’s clothes. He sees the shut blinds, the messy apartment, and the empty drip vials scattered around the coffee table.

  “This looks like a bad idea,” he says.

  “It’s definitely a bad idea.”

  “Why not build a new one that looks the same?”

  “Because it wouldn’t be her.”

  “And that’s important?” Shelley turns back toward the desk and looks at the laptop. “I don’t think you came across this antique by lawful means.”

  “I didn’t.”

  Shelley whistles and uses his sleeve to rub his prints off the keyboard. “Maybe you should leave tonight for Avernus,” he says. “Take my boat. Get out while you can, and go see Mom.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have to put her back together.”

  “You’re insane. You’re gonna get yourself killed or thrown in jail.”

  “Have you ever had someone taken from you?” Eliot rolls off his stomach and onto his side. “Someone you love taken without any warning at all?”

  “My sister,” says Shelley. “And my old man when I was twelve.”

  “And there’s nothing I can do about them. But at least with Iris I got a chance.”

  TWENTY

  The Catch Basin

  The old detective sits on the curb on Waring Avenue a few blocks north of the El Royale. He takes out his pocketbrane and tilts his fedora to protect his face from the midday sun. His young partner, however, is in a less glamorous locale. Shin-deep in the runoff from the morning rain, Detective Ochoa uses a stick to poke around in a catch basin beneath the street.

  “This is bullshit,” his voice calls from a hole in the curb. “The lieutenant said to look for Plath.”

  “And I’m sure every badge in the department is doing his best to find her.”

  “So why aren’t we?”

  “I thought we were. I thought looking for the weapon might turn up a good lead.”

  “Spenser was killed by a radial saw. The weapon was found at the scene.”

  “Did the bullets in the wall come from a saw?”

  Flaubert checks the map displayed on his pocketbrane. It shows all the catch basins in a four-by-thirteen block rectangle stretching east-west from Gower to Rossmore and north-south from Santa Monica to Beverly. This is the fifth one they’ve checked today.

  “Witnesses saw Plath with Spenser at the underground,” says Ochoa. “She bled oil and left circuits with her serial number.”

  “Bots don’t make a lot of money. This one left the DJ’s wallet full of his evening’s pay.”

  “’Cause she was in a hurry.”

  “And yet she had time to clean the scene of everything except the money and the evidence that would lead directly to her.”

  Flaubert stands and moves toward the shade to keep cool. He looks at a nearby Dumpster and wishes he could have checked it before the trash was collected the morning after the murder. It would also be nice if there were other officers assisting in the storm drains. As it is, Lieutenant Byron didn’t exactly sign off on this. In fact, he doesn’t know about it all. The brass at Rampart has an aversion to rigorous police work, unless it’s issued as a punishment.

  “It stinks down here. I don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

  The old detective coughs into his handkerchief as he paces above the hole. “Explain to me how a little bot like Plath, bleeding oil from her wounds, is able to use a heavy, antique radial saw against an experienced trapper twice her size.”

  “She drugged him,” says Ochoa.

  “Toxicology found a quinoa salad in his stomach.”

  “She set it up with the disciples.”

  “She worked retail. If she was political, she was more the type to support a cause through fashion, not violence. And if she was sucked into Lorca’s orbit, she sure wasn’t trained very well.”

  “Plath closes the case,” says the voice beneath the street. “The city needs it closed.”

  Well, the old detective agrees about that. There have been five revenge attacks on innocent androids in the last twenty-four hours. Armed Militiamen are patrolling the streets in their black vans. Employers are complaining they have to use private transport to get their bots safely to work. Lorca hasn’t said anything yet, she hasn’t issued her weekly loop nor
any claim for the murder, but if there are any more reprisals, it’s inevitable she’ll respond in spectacular fashion.

  “We got to show the bots who’s boss,” says Ochoa. “Otherwise, they’ll think they run this town.”

  An hour earlier, the two detectives drove past a shrine on the sidewalk in front of the El Royale. There were flowers, candles, loops of the saints, a faux vintage phonograph playing that awful binary the rookies play at the precinct gym. Flaubert slowed down the car so he could better see the young diggers weeping by the shrine. He wondered if they ever wept for Pink’s victims. Their little fingers nailed to Edmund Spenser’s wall—those were their shrines, hidden in a dark closet behind the room where they were terminated. No one mourned the missing bots.

  Well. Almost no one.

  “I agree that the city needs to close the case.” Flaubert coughs into his handkerchief and wipes his mouth. “But only if closing it provides the appearance of justice. If we arrest the wrong party, the people will find out, and we will have undermined the very cause we have sworn to serve.”

  “What cause is that?” asks the young partner.

  “The value and integrity of the state.”

  Flaubert makes sure no cars are passing then lays his handkerchief on the pavement. He puts a knee on the cloth and kneels close to the basin so he doesn’t have to shout.

  “It is a grave thing, when a man comes to believe he lives in a corrupted state. It affects the quality of his vision,” Flaubert tells his partner. “He begins to see the newsbranes as propaganda, his leaders as crooks, the ingot in his pocket as a worthless speck of metal. He begins to see his work as drudgery, or worse, as an agency of that very corruption he deplores.”

  The old detective tips his hat to a woman passing by with a stroller. She probably thinks he’s a well-dressed madman the way he’s carrying on with a hole in the ground. May be she’s right.

  “When the state fails in the administration of justice,” Flaubert continues, “we create armies of such disenchanted men. Some retreat into sullenness and despair. Some toward rebellious ideologies. Others search for answers in conspiracy theories or religious extremism.”