Reality 36: A Richards & Klein Novel

by Guy Haley

  He had his routine down to an hour and a half. First, diagnostics. He plugged himself into the Grid via the port at the back of his neck. Some machine somewhere checked his systems.

  There was a problem in his shoulder, the machine informed him, as it had informed him every morning of every day for the last eight weeks. His internal iron-lithium batteries were losing efficiency and needed replacing; a host of other minor cybernetic infirmities awaited him should he not receive maintenance soon. He felt older than his sixty-two years. Be a cyborg, live for ever. Yeah, right.

  Next, muscle building in his apartment's gym. If he did not aggressively work to keep his birth-given muscles in top condition they would wither, their functions usurped by his electroactive polymer implants, and he needed both sets or his skeletomuscular function would become unbalanced. He disengaged his artificial musculature and worked until his limbs burned and he was dripping with sweat. He sat for a moment while his phactory rebalanced his body chemistry, ensuring maximum muscle growth, another feature of his enhancement that could so easily be abused. Otto kept in mind the bloated, yellow faces of other cyborgs who'd overdone it. He refused to go down that road.

  Finally, five minutes' meditation, to blast the last residues of mentaug-called memory away.

  He showered, shaved, clipped his hair. He made a breakfast that could have fed four men, ate it, put on a crisp shirt and a petroleum-blue suit and tied a strip tie round his bull neck. His shoulder twinged as he dressed. He couldn't put off visiting that old son of a bitch Ekbaum any longer. He resolved to make an appointment. Later. He dosed himself with painkillers from his phactory, and waited for the pain in his shoulder to subside.

  He tidied his apartment's three rooms. This chore did not take long; Otto was fastidious. He examined his outfit in the mirror. Satisfied, he went to his wardrobe, opened the second door, flashed in the code via MT and picked out a couple of reliable guns from the armoury at the cabinet in the back: a short solid-shot carbine, and a machine pistol, good for inside work.

  He tried not to look at the memory cube standing on the velvet lining of the cabinet.

  Honour.

  Otto went out. After he'd shut the door the apartment cleaned itself and went to sleep, untroubled by dreams. Otto envied it.

  Chapter 4

  Albert

  Richards leaned against the balcony, champagne glass in hand, and nodded at the people passing him by on their way to the bar. Their returning smiles were uneasy.

  Look at that one, said Genie, peering out of the eyes of the sheath from behind Richards' sensing presence. He really doesn't like you. Look at him scowl!

  Shut up, Genie, just… just stop that, get out of my face! I can't concentrate.

  Ooh, well, sorr-ee, I don't get to come out much, in case you hadn't noticed. This is interesting.

  Are you surprised? All this jabbering! Keep yourself in the closenet system, Launcey's here somewhere.

  Hmph, said Genie.

  We are on a job. We concentrate when we are on jobs. It's hard enough passing myself off as a man in this plastic knock-off without you jabbering away in my head. It might look good, but the devil's in the detail. So, please shut up. There's a good girl.

  The android sheath Richards wore presented the outward appearance of a good-looking, well-groomed man of means. It fidgeted for him, passing its glass back and forth, glancing about, shifting its weight – tics Richards could never remember to do for himself.

  Don't shout at me, said Genie.

  Keep quiet and then perhaps you will learn something, OK?

  OK, said Genie. Keep your lovely plastic hair on.

  Richards tipped his glass at a couple as they walked past, oblivious to his and Genie's internal conversation. The man frowned and hurried the woman along.

  Smell, Richards sagely told Genie, the last ridge in the uncanny valley. No matter how sophisticated olfaction units become it'll never be crossed. That's why they're scowling. I don't carry their animal pong.

  Riii-ight… said Genie. Isn't it because you look like a smug EuGene catalogue model? You should be on a beach gazing at a distant ship with your jumper round your neck.

  I look right more or less, insisted Richards. But I don't smell right. Humans leak proteins, they give out airborne chemical signals and a cocktail of trace gasses. They expect to smell the same on me. Sure, meat people'll talk to me and not be aware they're conversing with a replicant, but they'll feel uncomfortable, like there's something… off. It's a real issue, no one, meat or numbers, have cracked it. Artificially duplicating human scent always fails. It's cheap rose perfume that only manages to smell of synthetic roses. It makes 'em agitated. In the worst cases, it makes the men aggressive.

  You should stop hitting on them then.

  I'm trying to teach you something here!

  And I'm trying to be quiet and concentrate on my scan, like you said, said Genie petulantly.

  This is important, for when you go out in the field on your own.

  "You'll let me out in the field? Really? On my own?" Richards' sheath squeaked. His hand shot up to his mouth as a trio of men turned to look at him. "Sorry, phone call," he said.

  Genie! Hands off!

  Sorry.

  Richards shot the rest of his lecture into Genie's memory, although without the mediation of her higher functions this was nowhere near as effective. Normally, Richards wore a sheath that was identifiably artificial, because it made his clients more at ease. The human mind is happier knowing what something is for certain; it becomes perturbed when presented with something that is not what it purports to be. The more subtle the signifiers of falsehood, the proportionally greater its perturbation. Richards' usual sheath might as well have "I am a robot" printed on its forehead, and everyone was the happier for it. Masahiro Mori had been bang on the money about that.

  Yeah, thanks, said Genie. I knew all that anyway, we did it in school.

  Undercover he felt as ill at ease with his sophisticated shell as his fellow concert goers did. He tried not to show it. He didn't want to stand there cursing his own involuntary movements like a lunatic.

  The crowd swelled. Richards scanned their faces, running over muscle structure, skull form and blood-vessel patterning, fed in by the sheath's wide-band vision system, his cunningly wrought nose teasing DNA fragments out of the air. Genie, projected remotely from the office like him, did the same through the building's security net. Hiving off duplicate minds was a big AI no-no, but Richards couldn't trust the task to some idiot subroutine. Not with Launcey, not since Salzburg. Genie needed the practice, anyway.

  He found these repetitive tasks soothing, but stayed alert. The man he was looking for was wise to his ways, which was why Richards was there pretending to be made of meat in the first place.

  What he wasn't expecting was to see Promethea off stage. She marched into the bar wearing a gynoid in the shape of a Persian princess, taller than anyone in the room, with attributes best described as overtly sexual. There the similarities with an actual person ended. Her skin and clingy dress were of shining bronze, its liquidity a reflection of her mercurial nature, reflecting in its turn the bar and its denizens. Her hair was a column of twisting flame and flowers (Holographs tonight, noted Richards, must be a concession to the hall), and her eyes a solid white. Promethea desired to be intimidating and beautiful. Richards reckoned she was trying too hard.

  She didn't miss a beat in her autograph signing as she thought out to Richards across the Grid.

  Hello, Richards.

  Ah, rumbled, he replied, his sheath's expression bored.

  You should be more careful, said Promethea.

  Hiya to you too, he replied. I'd offer you advice on your job too, but it's a nice enough concert as it is.

  I'll take that as a compliment, though I know you are not here to see me. I won't hold it against you.

  Sheath like that, you're welcome to hold whatever you like against me.

  Richards' sheath blinke
d for him, and he found himself in a pocket virtuality. Chill wind tossed silver into the leaves of birches. On the horizon dark green pines swayed, their trunks singing a fibrous chorus. Richards' skin prickled at the sudden drop in temperature, and he pulled his coat collar tight – the collar of the coat that went with the hat that went with the suit that went with the body he wore whenever he was out in the virt-spaces of the Grid.

  "Don't be vulgar, Richards," said Promethea sternly. Her appearance had changed. She was shorter, her skin a natural tan, though her eyes remained brilliant white.

  "I have to confess, it's a bit of a put on," he said. "I'm not interested in sex, though I have developed a sort of… aesthetic appreciation of human beauty. I thought I'd try taking it, um, further… See what all the fuss was about."

  Promethea giggled. Of the seventy-six extant Class Five AIs, less than a quarter had adopted female personae. Pretending to be a woman was harder than pretending to be a man, thought Richards, and the female Fives had the air of transvestism about them, even Pro.

  "Don't look too long. Appreciate them like poets appreciate ruins and enjoy them slowing rotting away. They have mayfly lives, Richards."

  Richards shrugged and gestured with his champagne glass, a copy of the one his sheath stood holding in the bar in the Real. "Yeah. No. I don't know. I doubt I'm about to fall in love like that daft arse Five in that shit film. What was that called? 'Eternal Sorrow'? Science fiction. Rubbish," he sipped his champagne. "Nice place you've got here."

  She nodded. "I modelled it on the subarctic. Much of this is plotted directly from a real location west of Tiksi, outside the Sinosiberian zone."

  "Not very much that's arctic," Richards shivered. "Still a bit cold though, and lonely."

  Promethea regarded him with mock sympathy. "Oh, Richards, are you still afraid of being on your own? Is that why you're sharing your body with that, what is it? A Three?"

  He smiled and pushed his hat back. "Not a three. She's… It's complicated. She's a new employee, I'm showing her the ropes."

  "Well." Her lips thinned. "How nice. One is never alone here. These forests are full of life. All of it here only since the tip; see how quickly the forest has grown."

  "Pretty," said Richards, and sipped at his drink. He pulled a face. "Yuck. They never did get virtual champagne right."

  "It is a symptom of human arrogance to suppose something like this could never be." Promethea did a pirouette and smiled wider. "Like children who hurt one another and assume they will never be forgiven, having given unimaginable harm. They are all drama and selfishness."

  "Some are pretty smart."

  She laughed. "Not enough are smart, Richards. But I love them, and they love my music. This is my home," she said. "And if the situation gets worse, the real version will be home to many others."

  "Prime real estate eh?" said Richards. "I really am enjoying your concert, by the way," he said, as earnestly as he could. "I have been meaning to come for a while."

  "Don't lie, Richards. We can't lie to each other." She walked through the rippling grass, and slipped her arm in his. She was as hot as the heart of a forge. There was something pure about Promethea's heat, something innocent and invigorating. "I am glad to see you."

  Promethea was unusually gregarious for a Five, not aloof like the others. Promethea was special.

  "And I'm glad to see you, and I'm not lying! It's my sincerity gap," he protested. Promethea watched his face. "I never have quite cracked the sincere. I can lie with the best of them, but can I put across a heartfelt emotion? No. It's a curse, I tell you."

  "It is because you have no heart."

  "Hey now! You'll hurt my feelings."

  "To which I say, ditto brother, you lack those as well, only the jig of numbers make you feel so."

  "I am trying to be nice," he growled.

  "There's a first time for everything," she said. "And a last." Her smile faded.

  He finished his champagne. He tossed his glass into the air and it dissolved into atoms on the wind. They walked on past grey rocks fringed by bushes and rustling tufts of yellow grass. "Thanks for not blowing my cover." They came to the edge of a small steep valley, a brown stream at the bottom, and continued along its lip.

  "Your Gridpipe is well hidden, but I snagged it," she said. "As soon as I did, I knew you weren't here for me." She looked away from him.

  "Too cool for school, you." She pulled away. Richards shivered as her heat withdrew from him.

  "I do not blame you," said Promethea sadly. "I know you, you are what you are."

  "Aren't we all?"

  "We're all good at something, and the something we're good at is what we are," she said. "They say we are the freest of the Neukind. I love my music, but do I have a choice but to love it? I was made to make music, and to love doing so. The thought of not loving it frightens me, but then, is it the lack of choice in loving it that frightens me more?"

  "That vexes us all, lady," said Richards. "It's no different for the people people, if that's any consolation."

  "I am not so sure of that. So," she said briskly, attempting a smile, "are you looking for a someone, or a something?"

  "Like always, like you say, maestro, we are what we're good at. It's a someone this time."

  "Who is it?"

  "Oh," Richards waved his hand dismissively. "No one important, some businessman who's gone missing, minor aristocracy. You know what they're like."

  "No," said Pro.

  "They're all twits. The best education money can buy and the brains of a woodlouse to keep it in. His brother paid me and Otto to find him, though he's not going to enjoy the reunion. He's been up to no good, people who keep the kind of company he's been keeping never are. Lucky for him we're going to find him, because otherwise he'd wind up dead. His little brother is not going to like what we've uncovered, that I can guarantee. He can explain himself to his family, and to the police, it's none of our business after that." He didn't add that this case had taken him three frustrating months. Launcey was a slippery fucker with more aliases than Richards. Pro was correct in saying that Fives found it hard to lie to one another outright, but Richards was better at it than most of them.

  "Otto, eh? You still keeping company with him?"

  "Evidently."

  "Don't be facetious," Promethea thumped him in the shoulder. "Say hi from me," she said with genuine feeling. "I am pleased you came."

  "Nah, Pro, I always have to come in person. SurvNet's OK, but think of the data! It's a tsunami of shit. Most of it is so poorly graded, some of the system is one hundred years old, and it is so easily compromised… And, oh."

  She folded her arms.

  "Don't tell me, that wasn't what you wanted to hear exactly?" he said.

  The forest sang louder. He was relieved when she laughed.

  "You are rubbish, really, awfully rubbish. I am trying to make myself believe you give a damn about my music, Richards. You are not making it easy. Try lying once in a while.You might be good at finding things but it's a good job you aren't actually trying to find yourself a woman. You'd have a long wait."

  "You told me not to lie!" said Richards.

  "I'm fickle." She shrugged. "It's the way I was made."

  "And I'm doing my job properly, the way I was made. The SurvNet system is dumb and easy to fool," he said. "It requires involvement if you're to get anything useful out of it."

  "Tell that to the Four who runs it, I am sure he will disagree."

  Richards snorted. "I have. He did, but I don't care. Too often he and the people that use him – EuPol, the local plod" – Richards shrugged – "UNpol, you name it – lazy, overworked, corrupt, whatever. They've become reliant on the system, and the system is far too cocky. You have to do it yourself."

  "And masquerading as a human at my concert is the best way, is it?"

  "Launcey bought tickets, he's a music lover!" he said with a laugh.

  "You are following him now, in person, on foot?"

&n
bsp; "Sometimes, Pro, the old ways are the best. Hup! Wait! And there he is!" Richards waved his a hand through the air. A section of their shared reality wiped away to show the concert-hall bar back in the Real. The crowd stood frozen, movements of the people that made it up so slow as to be almost imperceptible, for the AIs were running at a high rate, subjectively slowing time in the Real. "Gah, he's a tricky one!" said Richards. "Hiding in plain view, eh? And it appears he's about to leave." The man, entirely unexceptional in appearance, was heading for the exit as if he were moving through glue. "Look at that, clever clever." He whistled in appreciation. Pushing his hat back, he bent forward into the wipe to get a closer look. "He's had his face altered, heat filaments wormed under his skin to mask his blood-vessel pattern for a show! His suit's got an olfaction unit, confuses the hell out of SurvNet systems when overlaid on a genuine human scent. Internal multi-pattern contacts, retina and iris, thinskin gloves, programmable fingerprints… That's the works, he's even altered his gait, you have to respect this guy!" Richards looked into Promethea's face, his own wide-eyed with excitement. "You know that's the easiest way to iden—"