A Toaster on Mars

by Darrell Pitt

  6

  Nicki was relieved to see Blake navigating through the traffic without crashing. He had one or two near misses, but he was a surprisingly good driver considering he didn’t use the onboard AI.

  Once they’d arrived at PBI headquarters, Blake and Nicki took the elevator to the main concourse, which was crammed with members of the public wanting to file reports. Blake pointed to a statue at one end of the service desk. It was a heavily bearded three-breasted woman with a blaster in one hand and handcuffs in the other, set on a three-foot-high pedestal.

  ‘Simone de Chargette,’ he said. ‘The PBI’s first—’

  ‘—Commissioner of Police. Born 2232, died 2274 in a gun battle against the lunar mafia.’

  ‘You know your history.’

  ‘I’m familiar with the entire history of the PBI. Actually, I’m familiar with the history of almost everything.’

  ‘You know what that makes you sound like?’

  ‘A smart cyborg?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  They managed to push their way through the crowds until they finally reached the staff entrance at the far end.

  ‘You got a badge?’ Blake asked Nicki.

  ‘Of course I’ve got a badge.’ When will this guy get with the program? she wondered.

  Nicki had come across prejudice every day of her life. Everyone she met thought she was a robot, but it couldn’t be that way with Blake. She had to work with him.

  A guard held up a hand as they approached the barriers.

  ‘What is it?’ Nicki demanded. ‘You’re going to point out that I’m carrying metal?’

  ‘Robots have their own entrance.’

  ‘I’m not a robot,’ Nicki said, showing him her ID. ‘I’m a cyborg.’

  ‘What’s that? A religion?’

  Sighing, she explained that she was, in fact, nine per cent human.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the guard said. ‘I don’t think that counts.’

  ‘How much does it take to be human?’

  ‘Beats me. Robots use the basement entrance.’

  Blake looked pointedly at the badge in her hand. ‘She’s got the badge,’ he told the guard. ‘That means she comes through here.’

  The guard backed off.

  ‘Thanks,’ Nicki said to Blake as they entered another elevator.

  ‘It doesn’t make us pals. If you’ve got the badge, you use the same entrance as everyone else.’

  They stepped out into a room filled with hundreds of office cubicles. It was almost a duplicate of Nicki’s office in the south-west. The ceiling was lined with old-style flat bulbs that cast a faint nicotine-stained light over everything. The booths were big enough to swing a cat, but not much else. Most of the agents had picture vids on their desks or walls. The computers were standard: thirty-six-inch semicircular screens with 3D projection.

  Some bright spark in personnel had decided to decorate the other walls with a mural of a forest setting. It was probably a good idea in the beginning, but agents had made adjustments to suit themselves. Video cut-outs of dinosaurs, monsters and ghosts peered from behind trees. Agents used them for target practice when they were bored.

  ‘Where’s Pomphrey?’ Blake asked an agent as they passed.

  ‘In a meeting with the bigwigs on level 700,’ the agent said. ‘Who’s your girlfriend?’

  ‘None of your business,’ Blake said, and turned to Nicki. ‘A lot of the guys here don’t get out of the office much,’ he explained. ‘If in doubt, check for a pulse.’

  Zeeb says:

  In case you’re thinking Blake is joking, he isn’t. The PBI actually brought in a policy a few years ago known as Bronski’s Law, instigated after an agent, Abe Bronski, was found deceased at his desk. This wouldn’t have been much of an issue, except he’d been dead for six months.

  When asked why no one had noticed he was dead, his co-workers said they just thought he was quiet. Fair point. I mean, how much of a ruckus does a dead person make?

  So now there’s someone employed to check that everyone at a desk is alive. Not active, mind you. Just alive. Expecting some people to exhibit more than a pulse is probably expecting too much.

  Nicki glanced around the room at the other agents. Most were at their computers, taking calls or speaking to criminal informants, whose images were silhouetted on the screens to protect their identities. A few agents were displaying pictures of the Elbow.

  Blake led her down a corridor.

  ‘You’re not in here?’ she said, in surprise.

  ‘I’ve got my own office,’ Blake said. ‘An advantage of seniority.’

  Or the rest of the team can’t stand working with you, Nicki thought.

  The office wasn’t big, but it had a window, which was almost unheard of in the PBI. A mechanical pigeon with three eyes had huddled outside the glass, but flew off when it spotted them.

  The room contained two desks and two chairs, a pair of computers and half a dozen filing cabinets. Nicki hadn’t seen filing cabinets before, so she checked her datapad—a tablet with lightning fast access to the Hypernet—to see what they were.

  ‘You still need one of those?’ Blake asked, nodding to the datapad. ‘I thought you had a super-brain.’

  ‘I do,’ Nicki said. ‘I don’t like to clog it up with rubbish.’

  The computers were ancient, probably not from this century, and buried in stacks of paperwork—another anomaly in most offices.

  One of the desks was grimy, but the other was pristine.

  Nice to see it isn’t a complete dump, Nicki thought.

  Unexpected items hung off the walls, including a giant rubber hammer, a plastic ostrich, three purple eggs the size of footballs and a piano accordion.

  Nicki could recall the homes of five serial killers that had looked similar.

  ‘So this is your office,’ she said, trying not to sound offensive.

  ‘This is it, tin girl.’

  ‘Nicki.’

  As Blake sat down, Nicki noticed his chair was made of leather and timber. Where does a person find junk like this? The chair creaked under his weight.

  ‘This is where justice is served,’ he said. ‘Where the pieces of the puzzle get put together. Where I while away the lonely hours between cases.’

  Nicki pointed to a life-sized dummy jammed into a corner wearing a serene smile and nothing else.

  ‘Friend of yours?’

  ‘That’s a memento from a very famous job I worked on, The Case of the Gorgeous Girlfriend.’

  Zeeb says:

  There’s a long history of simulated companions throughout many civilisations. The leading text on the subject is Hanley’s Blow by Blow.

  One of the most unusual incidents ever to involve a simulated companion occurred on Farnimus Three, where a ship from Galagus spent weeks establishing first contact with a resident—only to discover she was a simulated companion named ‘Rosie’ discarded after a bucks party.

  This was unfortunate, as a whole series of peace, trade and foreign agreements had been established before the truth was revealed.

  Now there’s one thing you should know about the people of Galagus: they are particularly sensitive. Believing they had been purposely fooled by the people of Farnimus Three, they immediately launched a full-scale nuclear attack, causing the death of millions and a return to the Stone Age.

  Interestingly, Rosie was later found buried under a house. She eventually married a diplomat, and they still live happily to this day.

  And while we’re on the subject, my documentary on simulated companions, An Empty Love, is available for sale on gBay this week for only ninety-nine credits. Be quick!

  ‘The Gorgeous Girlfriend,’ Nicki mused, searching her memory. ‘I recall hearing about it.’ She picked up a three-foot-long key. ‘And this?’

  ‘The Case of the Killer Key.’

  She nodded to a locked bag. ‘And this?’

  ‘That’s just a case.’

  ‘I see.’
>
  ‘I’ll get you started on the Badde files,’ Blake said. ‘Reggie will help you.’

  Blake pushed a button on his computer. Nicki soon realised it was a G9000. It made a sound not unlike a merry-go-round coming to life. Nicki half expected it to start playing fairground music. A few lights flashed and a green blinking cursor finally appeared on the screen. In front of the computer sat a flat board decorated with letters of the alphabet.

  Good grief, she thought. It has a keyboard.

  ‘Hey, Blake!’ Reggie’s tinny AI voice rang out from a loudspeaker on the front. ‘Who’s the funky lady with you? Nice curves!’

  ‘Down, boy,’ Blake said.

  He introduced Nicki to the computer, then said, ‘Reggie, bring up everything on Badde. Every crime, every putrid detail.’

  A stream of information appeared on the screen.

  Blake glanced at his wristcomm. ‘It’s 4pm,’ he said, heading for the door. ‘The case is all yours, seeing as how Pomphrey doesn’t want me working it, Agent Steel.’

  ‘Call me Nicki,’ she said. ‘And where are you going?’

  ‘Following a lead.’

  ‘So you’re not going to a bar to drink Plutonium Supernovas? The medical report at the hospital said your liver looked like it was used to mop the floor.’

  ‘You must have been checking someone else’s file.’

  Blake disappeared out the door, leaving Nicki in the silent office. She sighed and turned her attention to the computer.

  ‘Looks like it’s you and me,’ she said to Reggie.

  ‘Nice,’ he said. ‘You doing anything Friday night?’

  7

  Blake was halfway across town when his phone rang.

  ‘Blake? It’s Astrid.’

  Astrid.

  ‘Uh,’ he managed. ‘Hey.’

  Zeeb says:

  Love isn’t easy, to which I can all too easily attest. I was once in a relationship with a lovely seven-tentacled lass from Boggler Nine, and one day I’ll share the details with you. Suffice to say, it was one of the great romantic tragedies—think of Romeo and Juliet, or Gggurk and Puglioth, and you’ll know what I mean.

  Blake Carter is currently single but was previously in a relationship known on Earth as ‘marriage’.

  Briefly, marriage is a form of slavery. You know how sometimes one twin doesn’t evolve during pregnancy and ends up as a lump on the other twin’s side? It’s like that, except they get lumpier over the years.

  Usually the duties of the male and female are fairly evenly divided. The man has to remove the garbage from the place of residence, watch vast numbers of sporting events on television and secrete huge quantities of gas from his rectum. The woman, usually, is required to do everything else.

  This does not always lead to harmonious living. For Blake Carter it had led to the next stage of marriage, known as ‘divorce’. This is when the man and woman separate from each other. They each take out their own garbage, and the woman is allowed to secrete gas from her rectum without fear of retribution.

  Long hours of work had been a contributing factor to Blake’s divorce. Too late he had realised that being a PBI agent was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.

  ‘Hey, yourself,’ Astrid said.

  ‘What’s up? Has your broom broken down? Or is your cauldron on the blink?’

  ‘Normally I wouldn’t call you—’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘—but Lisa hasn’t come home.’

  Lisa.

  The sound of his daughter’s name produced a twinge in Blake’s heart. The worst part of his divorce three years ago hadn’t been the loss of his wife—although that had been painful—but the separation from his daughter. He had not spoken to Lisa since the breakup, but he would sometimes visit her school at the end of the day just to watch her leave.

  Whoever it was that said love hurts was right.

  He was worried, but now he had to think like a PBI agent and not like a father. Most missing persons turned up within twenty-four hours. Lisa was twelve, just the right age to start causing problems.

  ‘Have you rung her friends?’ Blake asked.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘If you don’t want my help—’

  ‘I do. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,’ Blake said. Then an unsettling thought occurred to him. ‘Does she have a boyfriend?’

  ‘Are you kidding? She’s not even a teenager!’

  ‘They start early these days.’

  ‘Well…there is a boy she’s very friendly with, a boy from her scarmish team.’

  ‘You’re letting her play scarmish?’ Blake asked. ‘Are you insane?’

  Zeeb says:

  Blake’s question was rhetorical, but it need not have been. Scarmish has been voted the most dangerous game in the entire southern arm of the Milky Way. Two hundred people die every year, with many thousands suffering serious injuries.

  It’s also fun as hell.

  The rules are simple. First, there are no rules. Or very few. You know that old game called soccer that people used to play? Scarmish is similar, but it’s contested in a zero-gravity environment, and the players wear rocket packs. The ball is magnetised and players have magnetic disrupters that fire charges at the ball, propelling it across the field.

  But it’s the antics around scarmish that get the real attention. Riots occur on a daily basis at matches, the worst ever being on Mixamus Nine, where fans started decapitating rivals and using their heads as balls.

  Authorities did little to stop the riot until they realised one of the heads was that of the prime minister.

  No one likes to see their prime minister’s head used as a scarmish ball. Even if you didn’t vote for him.

  ‘No, I’m not insane,’ Astrid said. ‘She wears full body gear, the same as her friends. She’s never been hurt.’

  Of course she lets Lisa play scarmish, Blake reflected. Astrid had played it for eight years, representing Earth in the Galactic finals. But that was twenty years ago. These days she lived a more peaceful life teaching literature at university.

  ‘Scarmish is too dangerous,’ he now muttered.

  ‘Don’t act like you’re her father!’

  ‘I am her father—’

  ‘Fathers turn up for their daughter’s birthday parties.’

  Not the party, Blake thought. Not again.

  ‘Yes, the birthday party,’ Astrid said, as if she could read his mind. ‘It’s a little hard to forget the day you broke her heart.’

  ‘I was catching the Toe Killer!’

  ‘There was always some interstellar criminal who needed catching,’ Astrid said. ‘You put them before Lisa. No wonder she doesn’t speak to you.’

  This conversation was going nowhere. ‘Check the scarmish fields,’ he advised her. ‘Ring her friends. Then the hospitals. Let me know how you go.’

  ‘I will.’

  His wristcomm went dead.

  In the early days of their divorce, Blake had held hope that he and Astrid would get back together. As time had passed, however, his hopes had all but died. The only time he truly considered it a possibility was when he thought about Astrid’s surname. Carter. She had not changed it.

  Maybe there was still a chance.

  Blake brought Sally in to land outside a line of bars on the east side 494th level. Natural light didn’t filter down this far, and it was late in the day anyway, so most of the illumination came from fluorescents hanging from cornices.

  Bars, cubicle hotels and burnt-out shops lined both sides of the lane. A plastic cat rooted through a garbage bin, while a two-headed seagull flew off with half a cooked chicken in its beaks.

  Between two garbage bins lay a drunk who was arguing with a mechanical head that looked like Julia Roberts. But something must have been broken because she winked continuously while one of her ears spun.

  ‘You never loved me,’ the drunk said.

  ‘I would have stayed fo
r two thousand,’ the head said. ‘Two thousand…two thousand…two thousand…’

  ‘You know how much I hate this part of town,’ Sally said. ‘Do we have to come here?’

  ‘We do.’

  ‘You won’t stay out late, will you?’ Sally pleaded. ‘A girl like me could end up without an engine, no wheels and—’

  Blake ignored her. His mind was on Lisa, and he kept having to remind himself she wasn’t a small child anymore. Twelve years old. She would be fine. Neo City was a big place with lots of distractions. It was easy for kids to lose track of time.

  He pushed through the doors of the Pink Hyperdrive.

  Time for some distractions of my own, he thought.

  8

  Nicki sighed.

  The grime was so intense in Blake’s office that even the grime had grime. A microscopic examination showed some interesting results: as expected, it was mostly dust, which, like all dust, was skin. The next largest element was pizza—and not just any kind of pizza. Nicki’s nose twitched in recognition as she searched her database. Blake liked the Super Meat and Chilli Lovers pizza from Al’s Pizza Joint on 99A Street.

  Yep, she thought. No mistaking that sauce.

  Only the unused desk was in pristine condition. Why?

  Nicki started typing.

  ‘I know you said no to Friday night,’ Reggie said, ‘but maybe—’

  ‘No offence,’ she said, ‘but get lost.’

  Nicki disconnected Reggie and put a call through to the server. She could have logged on via her internal connections, but she preferred to behave as much like a human as possible. It made full bloods feel more comfortable.

  Full bloods. She didn’t like thinking of people that way, but her nine per cent was jealous of those who were one hundred per cent human. They grew hair, shed skin, sweated moisture, bled blood and cried tears.

  Logging in via the mainframe, Nicki was surprised when an error message came up on the screen.

  USER UNKNOWN.

  ‘This is Nicki Steel,’ she said. ‘Agent number MPFC1969.’

  UNKNOWN.

  ‘Huh?’

  UNKNOWN.

  ‘What are you? Broken?’

  I DON’T APPRECIATE BEING SPOKEN TO LIKE THAT.