Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel

by Judd Trichter

  “I didn’t know,” he says again.

  Davydenko charges forward, and Eliot fires without looking. Chin tucked, eyes shut, he squeezes off a volley of slugs. He pulls the trigger even after the last round is spent and the hammer clicks without firing.

  The train rambles on a choppy current of air as Eliot awaits Slugger’s attack. But it doesn’t come. He opens his eyes tentatively and sees no sign of the bot except for a streak of oil across the contoured roof of the train. He leans over to the side and sees the lit windows of factories illuminating the fog.

  “Hey,” says the conductor’s voice from the other side of the train. “Get off a’ there.”

  Eliot scoots perpendicular across the roof, looks down, and sees Slugger Davydenko, oil running from his wounds, holding his weight from a side window.

  “Get off a’ my train!”

  The conductor strikes at his fingers with a flashlight. The Russian reaches up and yanks him through the glass. The conductor’s uniformed body plunges into the low-lying smoke of the city.

  In a panic, Eliot pulls himself back to the center of the roof. His gun is useless now. No bullets. Nowhere to hide. No one steering the train. The first car lists and the others follow. Eliot scurries sideways like a hamster trying to keep his balance on the circumference of a turning wheel. He shimmies to the side, holds onto the corner of the roof and looks inside the train window. He sees a feeble passenger with Coke-bottle glasses clutching a handrail. Alone in the car, the passenger falls toward the conductor’s booth like a last piece of candy shaken inside an empty box. He pops around the seats until he finally makes it to the cockpit door. Slugger’s legs dangle on the opposite side of the car. His foot kicks through the glass before he swings inside the window.

  Suddenly, the train torques in the opposite direction, righting itself as the feeble passenger overcompensates on the yoke. Eliot climbs back to the top then slides backward as the train arcs into the air. He holds the grooves of the roof as he lowers himself between the hurtling cars.

  A hand grabs his ankle. Eliot looks down to see the Russian standing in the doorway. He loses his balance as the train banks abruptly and the two back cars whip into the side of a skyscraper. The glass shatters from the building as metal clashes with metal. The cars decouple and fall, tumbling and flipping before they hit the ground.

  The Russian grabs a door handle allowing Eliot to shake free. He falls between the footplates and catches the coupler on his way down. He holds on with his strong, mechanical hand while his body dangles in the air.

  Sirens whistle beneath him. Drones and floaters, launched from their bases, speed toward the flying train. The Russian stomps on Eliot’s fingers with his heel. Pain shoots up his arm. Eliot sees a long bar that runs the length of the undercarriage. He grabs it and swings away from the coupler. He raises his legs and wraps them around the bar to relieve the burden from his injured hand. With his back against the city, Eliot crawls, backward and upside down, forearm over forearm, the length of the car. Arching his neck, looking over his head, he can see Slugger lowering himself beneath the train.

  No quit in this bot, thinks Eliot. No chance he’ll ever give up.

  The first car lowers toward the river dragging the remaining cars behind. Floaters glide alongside. Over a bullhorn, a pilot shouts directions to the cockpit, instructing the feeble passenger how to land.

  Eliot crawls beneath the train as it speeds above the river dipping tentatively then jerking itself back up. The Russian catches up and positions himself beneath Eliot’s body. He wraps his muscled legs around Eliot’s midsection and squeezes his organs and his ribs. He uses one massive hand to hold his weight from the bar while a free arm is used to choke Eliot from behind.

  Androids peer out of their shanties as the train speeds above them. It winds along the river’s contours arcing over bridges and feinting toward the surface with the rescue drones following swiftly alongside.

  Eliot’s ribs crack between the squeezing legs. A peaceful dizziness overcomes him as his throat is compressed by the hinge in the Russian’s elbow. The lifeblood slows in his veins. But even as the breath bellows from his lungs, Eliot can sense that Slugger isn’t as strong as he was in the pit. Oil bubbles in the bot’s mouth, and there’s a dampness by his right thigh from where a bullet penetrated his skin.

  The train lowers; it wants to land but has too much speed. Eliot releases one hand from the undercarriage and rests his weight against the Russian’s chest. He finds the wet spot on Slugger’s leg and pokes his finger through the bullet hole in his jeans. The Russian growls beneath him. Sirens blare. The lights of the city blur past as the train gains altitude and loses the river below. Eliot hooks a wire with his finger and rips it out of the android’s leg. As the limb flails uselessly beneath them, the enraged fighter clamps his teeth into Eliot’s ear. Eliot turns his chin and bites back. He chews into a buckshot wound, and with his teeth, he rips out more wires from Slugger’s arm.

  The train rises. The bot’s arm releases it’s grip. Slugger dangles over the river, his wires exposed, oil streaming from his wounds. He holds on to Eliot’s coat lest he plunge into the dirty smoke of the city. Slugger needs Eliot now; the hunter clings to his prey. The train rises to clear a bridge. The fighter’s weight stretches the seams of the coat as the train gains more altitude. The fabric rips. Eliot’s ear tears off in Slugger’s mouth, and the Russian’s body falls from the sky. He screams and grabs in desperation at the air. With Eliot’s torn coat in his hand and a bloody ear in his mouth, the fighter drops several stories until he lands atop a spire that pierces into his back and out of his chest. Pinned and wriggling atop a bridge, the Russian fighter flails and punches as the oil pours from his body and the power drains from his limbs.

  The train lowers. It finds a fast course against the eddies and turns with the contours of the river’s path. Eliot crawls into the space between two cars and pulls himself onto the footplate as the train skims the surface of the water. He grabs for a handle and yanks an end door open and collapses his body inside. The door slams shut as the front car smashes against the shallows of the river. On impact, the train’s safety-spray floods the interior with a deluge of heavy foam that expands into a rubbery shock absorber for Eliot’s tumbling body.

  The train twists and skids and caterpillars in the middle with cars springing into the air, erect, then falling with steel shards slicing through the metal in their path. The train tumbles to its side and floats atop the black water sludge. The crash ends but the mangled iron rocks back and forth in the river like a fever-sick patient sweating in his bed.

  Within the cars, the foam dissolves, and Eliot sinks in the white bubbles melting beneath him. Water rushes through the broken windows. Sirens sound above the din. Given his injuries, he crawls as best he can toward a crack in the fuselage. He grabs a sharp metal edge and allows the water to push him up through the opening. He emerges from the wreckage like a broken ghost climbing through the splintered planks of his casket.

  Androids leave their homes along the banks and trudge out in the chest-high sludge water to get to the fallen train. Some tear slabs of metal from the cars and rip the limbs off injured bots. Others steal wallets and watches from disabled heartbeats. Others still dive into the muck to pull survivors from the wreck. They form relay chains and move the victims to the riverbank. Where nurse bots treat wounds and administer CPR.

  Gunfire explodes from a floater in the sky. Bullets sweep the river cutting down the looters and Samaritans alike. The bots scatter and dive for cover but the gunfire persists.

  Eliot kneels on the sinking metal and watches as a barrage of Molotov cocktails flies from beyond the shanties and smashes into the floater above. The craft bursts into flames and drops from the sky. It lands atop the train where it burns like a funeral pyre on a sacred river. Bots rush the downed craft and pull policemen from the wreck. They rip the dying heartbeats’ limbs from their bodies in an orgy of revenge.

  The flames igni
te chemicals floating on the water’s surface. From the west side of the river, a phalanx of officers strafe the tent city with machine guns. The bots retaliate with slabs of concrete launched from makeshift slings and catapults. They attack from the rooftops as the drones attack from the sky.

  Covered in white foam, a Chug-Bot drifts by in the flaming current, and once again, Eliot remembers the girl. He tries to recall which car she was in. He leaps along the protrusions of the sinking train looking for some sign of her between the cracks of the wreckage.

  “Eliot,” a voice calls from the shanties on the riverbank. “Get the hell out of there!” His brother snaps a loop from his car before calling out again. “We gotta go!”

  Black smoke rises from the river. Gunfire and screams penetrate the flames. Eliot hops along the sharp edges of a middle car crumpled like a sheet of paper. Deep within the crash, he sees a patch of pale white skin reaching upward from the darkness. He lowers his body into the twisted metal until he can discern the girl’s form.

  “Take my hand,” he says, but the girl doesn’t respond. He lies down against the hot metal and thrusts his arm into the void. “I won’t hurt you,” he tells her. “I promise.”

  Still, the girl doesn’t respond.

  Eliot extends his arm, his shoulder burning, until he has a grasp of the girl’s wrist. He pushes himself up and plants his knees on the metal. Her body is weightless in his hand; he lifts her easily, too easily. Her uncanny lightness unsettles him. Standing on the fuselage, holding the girl in the air, Eliot can see that her torso is severed on an angle beneath her chest. Her parts spark and her wires sag beneath the shear. Her open eyes are lifeless and blank, one with a little red fleck.

  “Eliot,” Shelley screams from a side of the battlefield. “Get out of there!”

  Projectiles arc above them. The smoke billows. The train sinks into the muck. Eliot hears his brother screaming from the shore. He feels the river burning around him. He looks at the little red fleck in the dead bot’s eye: so useless and intact.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Apocalypse

  Right Pinky—Edmund “Pink” Spenser

  Left Arm—Uchenna

  Head,—Jillian Rose Models

  Legs—Tucson Metal Solutions

  Torso—Chief Shunu/Joshua Dominguez

  Right arm—Lorca

  Eyes—Blumenthal Promotions

  The police have a checkpoint on Crenshaw. Assault rifles across their chests. The car approaches. Inside, Eliot holds a rag to the side of his head. Behind the wheel, Shelley does the talking.

  “I got to get him to a hospital.”

  Eliot shows the injury, and the cops wave them past. Blood drips down his neck. His clothes are soaked. The pain runs from the side of his head down his shoulder and into his busted ribs. He takes a vial from the glove box and pours a few drops in a rag. He takes a sniff then presses the cloth to where he used to have an ear.

  “There’s a first aid kit in the saloon,” says Shelley

  “I know.”

  “You got to take care of that.”

  Sirens flare around them. Armored trucks with SWAT teams race east through the city. Explosions blast through the night.

  “I gotta get loops of this,” says Shelley. “This could be my chance.”

  As they escaped the river, floaters and drones scorched the bots’ tents and shanties with flamethrowers. Fleeing androids carried the fire to the warehouses and factories nearby. They smashed windows and flipped cars. They stole weapons from downed officers and shot back at the sky. Shelley drove with the current of the riot until he made it out of harm’s way, but even now, in the car, they feel as if they’re only inches ahead of the swell.

  “Can you get to Avernus like that?” Shelley asks.

  “I can get there.”

  “You’ll need help.”

  “I’ll have it.”

  Because he’ll have Iris. It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t how he drew it up, but Eliot has her parts now, every damn one of them. Against all laws of probability, against all warnings and his own fears, he has everything he needs to put her back together again.

  “You all right?” asks Shelley.

  “I’m all right.”

  He’s not all right.

  The price was too high. It split him in two. Half of Eliot is in the car but the other half is kneeling atop the train with his fingers inside a young girl’s face.

  “She was dead already,” he says in the car.

  “Who was?”

  “The girl.”

  Shelley hasn’t looked at him since the river. He aimed his loop-cam to take a picture when Eliot raised the bot out of the wreckage, but then he lowered the cam and looked away. Shelley, his flesh and blood, who has no quarrel with the ugliness of the world—shit, he revels in it—couldn’t look at his own brother as Eliot removed the girl’s eyes.

  “There was no point in leaving them there,” says Eliot.

  “I hear ya.”

  “Should I have just let them sink in the river?”

  They drive past the pump jacks on the oil fields in Baldwin Hills.

  “She was a bot, for Chrissake. For all we know she was older than me.”

  “Who you trying to convince?” Shelley asks.

  Throngs of androids drift onto the street to watch the fire from the hilltop. Shelley honks, but they’re slow to get out of the way. Challenging and unafraid, they stare into the car as it passes.

  “You can’t tell Iris,” says Eliot.

  “Tell her what?”

  “She’ll never forgive me.”

  “All right.”

  “She’ll never forgive herself.”

  A burning Dumpster blocks the entrance to the freeway. No matter, Shelley drives around it and merges onto the ramp. They head west toward the harbors, away from the riot, joining a stream of cars pouring onto the freeway. People headed for where they hope it’s safe. Maybe Mexico, maybe the water, maybe south toward the desert. Somewhere they hope the bots won’t follow.

  “I fucked up,” says Eliot.

  “Only by your own terms.”

  “What other terms are there?”

  The bridge to Naples Island in Long Beach is blocked off by armed heartbeats. They check pulses before allowing the car to pass. The island is arranged in concentric circles with canals that circumscribe the footpaths in front of the houses. Shelley’s boat is tarped and moored in front of a vacant property that sits in the center of nine canals.

  “I got it from here,” says Eliot. “Go get your loops.”

  “I’m helping,” Shelley insists.

  They pull off the tarp and untie all but one of the ropes. They remove the bumpers. Eliot hands his brother the key to his apartment in exchange for the key to the boat.

  “Call me when you get to Avernus.”

  “Of course.”

  “And do something about you ear,” says Shelley. “It’s really ugly.”

  The waterway is clogged with boats already leaving, headed to Catalina or a few days at sea until things settle down. If they settle down. There’s no way to know.

  “Come with us,” says Eliot.

  “You kidding? This is my chance!”

  “But what if this is it?” Eliot asks. “What if the whole city goes up tonight?”

  Shelley laughs. “And to think a schmuck like you was the spark.”

  The younger brother looks wistfully at the boat held to its mooring by one ragged piece of rope. This was his home, and now it’s floating away. He puts a hand on Eliot’s bad shoulder, above the wound that marks the day their family was separated into the living and the dead.

  “You would have regretted it if you’d let her go,” he tells Eliot. “For the rest of your life you would have wondered what it would be like if you’d taken those eyes.”

  “But now I regret taking the eyes,” says Eliot.

  “Not so much that you’ll throw them in the sea.”

  A horn blasts as a tanker makes its
way into the harbor. Smoke rises above the mountains and blacks out the moon east of the fires. A wave of hot air swirls all the way to the shore.

  “Give my best to Mom.”

  The car door slams. The wheels screech as Shelley drives back toward the freeway. Eliot wonders if he’ll ever see him again, wonders if he’ll even survive the night. He probably will. His brother’s the kind who always finds someone to take care of him. And even if the bots take over, they’ll find a use for Shelley Lazar, even if it’s just for entertainment. I just won’t be the one taking care of him anymore, thinks Eliot.

  He holds his side as he climbs aboard the boat drifting gently from the dock. He unties the last rope binding him to the land and tosses it onto the deck. Up on the bridge, he puts the key in the ignition and sets the throttle to neutral to keep the boat still. He heads below deck for the first aid kit so he can put something on his wound right away.

  A man coughs as the lights come on. Eliot sees him on the port-side couch in the saloon. His clothes and skin are burnt. His eyes squint in the light.

  “Good evening, Orpheus,” says the old man, pointing his gun to urge Eliot’s hands into the air.

  “Good evening, detective.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The Canal

  “We’re adrift in the innermost circle,” Flaubert says through his earpiece. “I need harbor police. I need a forensics team and a paramedic. Suspect has sustained an injury.”

  What the old detective won’t say in front of Eliot, cuffed and seated on the starboard-side couch, is that he has his own injuries to deal with as well. Second-degree burns and a broken leg from the blast didn’t deter him from investigating the lead that came through on the drone feed. He was able to autodrive out to Naples Island; he was able to get himself into the boat and suck up the alcohol onboard to keep the pain at bay, but getting back onto the dock with a suspect in tow will be impossible without the aid of other officers.