Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel

by Judd Trichter

  “How long will it be?” he asks the dispatcher. Then after receiving his reply, “Very well.”

  Flaubert hangs up and activates his pocketbrane to record any ensuing conversation. He places it on the table next to Pink’s laptop. The device glows green but will turn red if it detects anyone is lying. He finds the first aid kit under the sink and opens it on the galley counter. Supporting himself on his less-injured foot, he dons a pair of latex gloves and goes to work on Eliot’s wound.

  “And that’s the C-900 in the cabin?” he asks.

  Eliot nods.

  “And those are her eyes?” He gestures to the plastic bag on the couch. Eliot nods again, and the old detective tells him to hold still. He pushes aside the young man’s hair and cleans the wound with a disinfecting pad. “She’s beautiful.” Eliot winces as Flaubert applies a layer of antibacterial gel. “Seeing her put together, I can understand your passion to save her.”

  With the old detective this close, Eliot can hear what a struggle it is for the man to breathe. Knocking on death’s door but determined to see the job through—you have to admire the dedication. But why my case? Eliot wonders. Of all the open murders in Los Angeles, why was I so lucky as to draw this persistent bastard from the deck?

  “We have time,” Flaubert says as he stretches a bandage across the side of Eliot’s head. “The department has more pressing concerns tonight.” He tapes the bandage in place then steps away to evaluate the quality of his care. Back on the couch across from Eliot, he struggles to find a position that doesn’t cause him pain. “Should you come clean, the courts might show some leniency in their judgment.”

  Sitting in the boat’s dark saloon, the two adversaries face each other like weakened pugilists in the championship rounds of a fight. Each can hear the other’s labored breathing; each can see plainly the other’s wounds. Eliot is stiff, his neck bruised and swollen, an ear missing from his head. Opposite him, Flaubert’s leg is compromised, his clothes charred, his eyelids droop from exhaustion.

  “Was it your hope,” the old detective asks, “that Plath would take the rap for your crime?”

  “I’m not the one who made her a suspect.”

  “Nor did you do anything to exonerate her.”

  Eliot pulls at the restraints on his wrists. He looks at the curtain that blocks his view of the woman on the bed in the cabin. He looks at the eyes in the bag by the detective’s side. A pair of handcuffs, a curtain, and a man stand in his way. And time, of course, of which Eliot has little left.

  “How many were harmed as collateral in your campaign?”

  “How many did Pink kill?” Eliot asks in response. “How many would he have killed were he to survive?”

  Flaubert squints toward the stern of the boat as if the answer might lie somewhere near the bridge. “My feeling about Mr. Spenser is that he was a sociopath whose actions, though legal, were far from ethical.”

  “Then who cares who killed him?”

  “I do,” says the old detective. “It’s my job, the role I play in a process.”

  “A flawed process.”

  “The best process we have. Democracy, capitalism, America—none of it is perfect, but we are always becoming, always improving toward an ideal. Call it an illusion, but it is a working illusion.”

  “Working for whom?”

  “For those who opt in and play by the rules. Some of them anyway—you made a good living, did you not?” The old detective stifles a cough then clears his throat. He removes his pocket square but finds it charred beyond the point where it’s useful. “Of course, if your quarrel was with the law, there were avenues open through which you could have attempted reform. You could have spoken out or offered financial support to a cause. With your famous last name, you could even have run for office if you had wanted.”

  The saloon bobs up and down from the wake of a passing vessel. The curtain sways between the rooms. She lies a few feet away, thinks Eliot, fully assembled in the cabin except for her eyes. Just beyond the curtain.

  “You played a role in this, too, y’know.”

  “I did,” Flaubert agrees. “I should have done more to stop you.”

  “Or help her.”

  “Help her?” The old detective looks toward the curtain as if utterly confused. “They’re here to serve us, not the other way around.” He wonders if Eliot’s misunderstanding of that fundamental relationship, his excess of compassion lies at the root of his illness. Is it the cause or the symptom of something else?

  “It seems cruel to me,” says Eliot, “that we should be indifferent to the suffering of those who serve us. Why not treat them with dignity and respect?”

  “But how much dignity and respect?” Flaubert wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. In his tattered coat and tie, he looks more like a rumpled professor tutoring after hours than a detective pushing for a confession. “Listen to my lungs,” he says between breaths. “Look at the ash in the sky and the rioting in the street. Look at the newsbranes and what’s happened to your own family. They’re killing us, and you want to help them?”

  “Not them,” says Eliot. “Her.” He nods toward the curtain to indicate the body behind it as opposed to the abstraction about which the old detective speaks. A siren approaches. Pain sears into Eliot’s shoulder and swells across his back. The sound gets louder then diminishes, promising Eliot a little more time.

  “After I’m arrested,” he asks the detective, “what will you do with her?”

  “The evidence room, I suppose. Then after your trial, those parts that were taken from their legal owners will be returned. The rest will be given to Green Valley or sold off as scrap.”

  “And that serves your process? That’s fair to her even though she has done nothing wrong?”

  “It’s a great tragedy that there will always be victims,” says the old detective. “The state can enforce laws or regulations. It can settle disputes. It can prevent some tragedies, but certainly not all.”

  “But why not save a victim? If the heart demands it, and it costs you nothing—why not? All you’d have to do is give her eyes back.”

  “And take them out again when I have to return her parts to their rightful owners?”

  “Or let her go.”

  “I need her body for evidence.”

  “Not if I confess.”

  Through the window, a shaft of light from a street lamp crosses the old detective’s face. He had anticipated this request and decided beforehand to reject it. “Eliot, this is not a negotiation, you have no leverage, and I don’t require your confession. Sure, it would make things simpler; one might say you owe it to city for the suffering you’ve caused. But as for any weakness in my case, make no mistake”—he gestures to Pink’s laptop, to the eyes, and to the C-900 behind the curtain—“I have you. Dead to rights. And I have no interest in aiding or abetting your perverse objective, which I advised against the night we met.”

  The feint cry of a siren sounds in the distance. The old detective checks his watch and guesses that the timing’s right. This should be his men now coming to take the suspect away.

  Eliot slouches on the couch as an awareness of defeat drags his chin and lowers his gaze to the floor. He sees Flaubert’s shoes are covered with dust instead of their usual shine. He looks at his own shoes, too, and sees that red stain from the alley beside the maquiladora where Iris once worked. It’s the stain he picked up while the disciples dragged him to the basement with Ochoa. Eliot remembers the smell, the block in Heron that Lorca must have chosen while she was affected by Iris’s arm. He remembers how the guard Uchenna said that smell was distinct to that street in Heron: No block in Heron smell anything like it.

  And in that red stain on his shoe, in that sticky splash of color that reminds him of the flaw in Iris’s eye, Eliot recognizes one last remaining haymaker he can throw before quitting on his stool. His face rises. His eyes are clear as he sets up the punch. He looks at the pocketbrane glowing on the table and softens to the ol
d detective’s gaze.

  “What if I tell you where your partner is,” Eliot offers as a jab.

  The curtain billows. The siren outside gets louder as it nears.

  “My partner’s dead.” Flaubert slips the punch.

  “I know,” says Eliot. “I was there when it happened.”

  The old detective glances at the pocketbrane and sees it’s glowing green. So he was there with Plath and the others during the execution. Perhaps he also knew about the plan to bomb the precinct. A worse fellow than I imagined, thinks Flaubert. No court on the continent will show him mercy now.

  “And what if I tell you where Lorca is?” Eliot asks.

  Flaubert laughs, unimpressed, until he looks again toward the pocketbrane and sees it’s glowing green.

  Hm.

  Now, this he did not expect.

  The words repeat themselves in his head like the waves lapping onto the hull of the boat. Suddenly the nearing siren feels more like a threat than a rescue. He could use another minute to sort this new development out.

  “Let me and Iris go,” says Eliot, “and I’ll tell you where Lorca is.”

  Is it possible? Flaubert wonders as he watches the brane glow green. Here at the end of his career, after all the near misses and bum leads, on the night the city tears itself to shreds—is it possible that this one turns out to be the lead?

  The volume of the approaching siren increases. The boat rocks in the water. The old detective asks himself, Why not this one? Haven’t I always preached you work the file that lands on your desk? Small fish lead to bigger fish, shoe leather pays off? Why not this case, and why shouldn’t it be me who brings it home?

  “It’s not in my authority to release you,” says the detective. “But when my superiors arrive.…”

  “I will refuse to talk.”

  Yes, and they’d screw it up anyway, thinks Flaubert. In a rush to claim credit, someone will leak it to the disciples or the Militiamen or to the newsbranes perhaps. I should be the one who brings her in; I’d do it right. And what a payoff for years of honest police work, what a legacy to the department, what a validation I thought would never come. I could tell Ochoa’s children their father died for a reason, turn their daddy into a hero, quell the rage on the street, strike a blow against the enemy—but is the suspect telling the truth?

  “She’s in Heron,” says Eliot anticipating the question. Again, the pocketbrane glows green.

  “Where in Heron?” But the young man shakes his head.

  Eliot waits for the detective to think of the next step on his own. He knows Flaubert would never set him free, not after what happened to his partner, not without Lorca’s head delivered personally on a hook. But isn’t Lorca’s head worth a little compassion for a harmless bot who committed no crime?

  The old detective taps his lips with his finger. He looks to the curtain then the eyes in the bag laying by his side.

  “I’ll put them back in her head if you tell me.”

  “Deal.”

  The pocketbrane glows green.

  Flaubert inhales a big, thick lungful of sea salt air, and for the first time in years, the breath courses through his lungs without choking him.

  “Well played,” he whispers more to himself than to the suspect across the room. “Well played indeed.”

  So he’ll see her one last time. He won’t be able to spend the rest of his life with her, but at least for a brief moment their eyes will meet. Like Orpheus before him, Eliot will have his final glimpse, his last moment of love before an eternity of solitude.

  The old detective picks up the bag containing Iris’s eyes. He struggles to his feet and crosses to where he expects to find an android sleeping in a bed. But pulling back the curtain, Flaubert finds instead a blind foamer standing at the threshold with a flathead screwdriver in her fist.

  “No!” Eliot yells, but with Lorca’s arm protecting her, the raging bot stabs the screwdriver into the old detective’s gut. The eyes drop to the floor as Flaubert reaches for his weapon. With a feral cry, the android stabs again and again until gunshots blast her atop the bed.

  “Oh, God, no,” Eliot yells as he passes the cuffs beneath his feet.

  Oil and blood splatter the saloon. Flaubert’s body slumps to the floor. His lungs whistle as he strains to pull the screwdriver from his ribs.

  Eliot seizes the bag from beneath the old detective’s corpse. He pounces on top of the bot fluttering on the bed like a wounded bird. Oil gurgles from where the bullets struck. She swings her arms and bites. She claws at her own face as Eliot struggles to force her eyes into their sockets.

  “Iris,” he says as he pins her to the bed. He holds her face as the sirens near. “Iris, look at me.”

  The red-flecked eye connects with her brain. Her body calms. She blinks and takes a faltering breath.

  “Eliot?” she asks as she looks at the bandage on his head. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine.”

  She looks down at her body and her wounds. She looks around the cabin, confused about where she is.

  “My brother’s boat,” he tells her as he smooths the saliva from her lips. “We’re going to Avernus.”

  The sirens near. A tear magnifies the little red fleck in her eye.

  “And you’ve quit the drip?” she asks as she touches his face with her hand.

  “Yes,” he tells her even though it isn’t true.

  “Oh, Eliot,” says the android bleeding on the bed. “I’m so proud of you. You did good.”

  EPILOGUE

  Avernus

  Eliot stands on the bridge maneuvering the ship out of the canal and into San Pedro Bay. It’ll be an hour’s journey before they reach the Catalina shoals, after which he has to clear San Clemente and San Nicholas Islands before he’s past any threat from a patrol boat looking to haul him in.

  “Eliot,” her voice calls from the cabin. “I’m still bleeding.”

  “I’ll help you once we’re out of the harbor.”

  If the oil leaks into her works, it’ll short her engine and she’ll be damaged beyond repair. He has the tools to patch her up, but first he has to steer the boat out to sea. It’s too risky to help her now. The police drove to the dock as he was pulling out, and it’s certain they’ve radioed ahead. He’ll need luck if he’s going to make it past the harbor police and the Coast Guard after that.

  “I need you,” she yells again.

  “In a minute.”

  Who is this woman in the cabin of his brother’s boat?

  She was Iris first, then several other bots: a beauty, a martyr, a whore, a mother, a child, a murderer. Somewhere along the line she caught an infection that spread through her limbs. The fact that there’s no antivirus onboard means this is a problem that can’t be solved until they get to Avernus, if they get to Avernus. And who knows how they’ll deal with it there? It’s a week’s time sailing and Eliot needs Iris as a shipmate, but a few more days of the foam expressing itself and the bot will be more dangerous than the sea. Eliot will have to pull her apart, drain her juice, and wait to reconstruct her when her system’s clean. In other words, he has to kill her again just to save her.

  “Sweetie, I need you.”

  “Can you hang on a little longer?” he calls back.

  “I guess.”

  Orpheus never married. He never knew the day-to-day of a long commitment, only the fantasy of life with his deceased fiancée. If he had not looked back who knows what kind of husband he would have been, what kind of marriage they would have had, what kind of lives they would have lead? Would he have stayed faithful or run off with one of the goddesses that liked to sweep down from Olympus every now and then to fuck a mortal? Did she love him as much he loved her? The myth doesn’t say.

  “How you doing back there?”

  “I’m trying to stitch myself up, but I could really use your help.”

  Who is this woman he’s going to marry?

  A pair of jets flies overhead on their way downtown. C
ould be posturing or it could be an actual bombing run. Hard to say how bad, how out of hand the riot is that he started. Will the city change after this? Is this a turning point or just another in a long line of incidents that will be subsumed by the status quo?

  A line of ships heads west into the horizon. The radar shows only light rain to the north. Flaubert’s corpse lays wrapped in a sheet by Eliot’s side. He wants to give it a proper burial at sea. Make up a prayer and allow the man his dignity, he was a loyal servant who believed in the integrity of the state. It wasn’t his fault the world was shifting around him, and the man was too old and sick to see the change. “Turns out you can bring back the dead.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Iris calls from the cabin.

  “No one.”

  In the Greek’s day it was impossible, but now mortality is conquered in the same way flight was conquered two centuries ago. Man never did learn to fly himself, but he built a machine that could carry him. In the same way, we have not learned to be immortal, but we have built machines that can carry life further into time than our fragile DNA would allow.

  “A few more minutes,” he yells to Iris in the aft of the boat. “Then I’ll come down and help, okay?”

  “Okay,” she replies quietly, in a way that expresses her frustration.

  Who is this woman he’s taking to Avernus?

  Most of his description of the island was made up. He told her what she wanted to hear, but he has no idea what actually awaits them once they arrive. Will there be a place for them there, will they learn to fit in? He doesn’t know. And their marriage, too, will depend on secrets and lies. He won’t ask how Pink came to be in her apartment that night, whether she was looking for work or something else. And why does she have to know about Martha and Titty Fat and the girl?

  His head smarts, the pain in his shoulder is back. He sneaks another hit of drip. The clouds behind him reflect the fire across Los Angeles. Lives and fates welded together, metal contending with flesh, in a war against extinction. Eliot stands on the bridge adjusting the throttle and the angle of the rudder. Once he’s in the open water he can allow the computer to navigate. He can put his faith in the machine, but first he has to steer out of port and select his destination.