by Jett Lang
By day she joyrode, and by night she earned her keep. The byways and alleys of Angel Bay unlocked their secrets, luminous taverns and coveted vice parlors provided her with the contacts to navigate the underground power structure. Any person she was sent to find she located through a growing list of associates that pointed her in the right direction. Sometimes for a favor, other times as a payment.
It was early morning when she returned to her unit after a night of searching through an abandoned factory sector on the western end of the city. There were no messages on the recorder, and she wondered if it was worth paying for the service if she never made contact with anyone that didn’t need to know her home address. Toying with the thought, she opened her refrigerator and extracted a tropical fruit drink labeled, in red balloon font, ‘Sporty’s Electrolyte Blast.’
A quick inspection of the chilled interior revealed condiment packages and restaurant leftovers, and that she was running low on Sporty drinks. The essentials. She’d have to go out and find something sooner than she’d like, but for now she’d happily accept the carton of noodles and beef on the third shelf. She capped off the drink, found herself a fork, and took her meal into her living room.
Even for the family of four that the unit was built to house, the living space was excessive. A television dominated one entire wall and a window of reinforced glass commanded an excellent view of the Eastern Sea, the gated villas that dotted its shore. Queen placed her carton on a black lacquered stand beside a recliner facing the television-wall. She slipped out of her leather jacket and let it fall behind her onto the tight, bluish-black carpeting that the supervisor had called “frieze.” She sank back into the noisy but otherwise comfortable recliner, barely noticed the press of her Winnow in its underarm holster. The gun was a part of her, detached for showers and sleeping only. Even then it was always close. For it to be out of reach was not an option.
She switched on the television. A dozen channels of city-based entertainment, advertisements, reality shows, and miscellaneous documentaries riddled with state pride and glorification streamed past. She turned to the bloodiest thing she could find, which was, infallibly, the local races. A highlight reel from last night’s event, an especially gruesome display that saw a ten car pileup and five kills in the first couple of minutes. A failure of the lead car’s missile system and the subsequent explosion took out the two vehicles on its tail. All three of the cars and drivers were damaged far past repair. Things were worst for the lead car, or so the reel claimed.
They had no problem finding a fall guy: the senior pitman who’d been with them since the beginning. He was a gangly man with a red shock of hair showing streaks of gold under the stadium’s harsh floodlights. He was either resigned or at ease – maybe both – in the footage, but it was his dark eyes that caught Queen’s attention the most. They had a vacant intensity that she didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to think about.
She powered off the TV. After a meditative breath, she lowered the remote onto the end table beside her. Stabbed her fork into the box of noodles in her lap and ate. Solitude was an improvement over angry sounds and lights.
A flash of silver in the corner caught her eye. She was on her feet with her weapon ready before it could move again.
“Hello, Queen.”
A liquid voice, touched by sly humor. The silver object was a universal card; the fore and middle fingers that held it a duller metal. The robot stepped from the shadows, his fedora and trench coat both new, both deep, leathery brown. “Is this a bad time? I seem to have upset your meal. I apologize.”
She stepped over the spilled noodles, kept the Winnow trained on Five-Nine.
“I don’t like people coming over uninvited. You call first. That’s the rule.”
“Clearly. However, it is nice to be erratic once in a while.”
Queen shook her head slowly, holstered her sidearm, and turned to the splattered sauce and beef on her carpet. She sighed.
“I shall retrieve a moistened towelette,” Five-Nine said as the silver card vanished into an inner pocket. He walked down the hall.
“Bathroom is the last door on the left,” she called.
“I know.”
She let an angry breath out of her nose. “How long have you been here?”
“Long enough to have located the bathroom.”
“Have you been here before? Uninvited?”
She went to the mouth of the tiled hallway, stopped. The main LEDs in the bathroom were on, fully bright and leaking out onto dark porcelain squares. The machine’s long shadow moved on that lighted portion, searched in his deliberately lethargic manner.
“You have good taste in dwellings,” he said, ignoring her question. The sound of running water filled the empty space between them.
Her cheek rested against a cold, dark blue wall. “It was reasonable, and it’s close to the basics.”
“That is what I mean: You are a woman of utility first and aesthetics second.” The water cut off with a metallic squeak. “I respect that.”
“Can you cut the bullshit and tell me why you’re here?”
He clicked off the lights and emerged with the towelette draped wetly over his knuckles. The titanium glistened in the half-dark.
“No need to be crass this early in the day,” Five-Nine said, and passed her by.
She put her back against the television-wall. He hunched over, his trench coat pooled around his black elevator shoes. He gathered the noodles and beef back into the white box and then went about absorbing the sauce with gentle, circular motions of the towelette.
“What I mean to say is,” the robot went on, “we choose our residences in surprisingly similar ways. Career-minded, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Is this really a career for you? Seems more like indentured slavery after what Ellie did.”
He peered down, his motions unaltered. The orange-brown stain darkened.
“It is those similarities which qualify us for one another’s company.”
“I don’t care for the implication,” she said. “I have autonomy to live where I choose and–”
“And try to forget how badly you are getting shafted.”
Queen stood there, unsure of what just happened.
“New programs,” the robot said.
“So much for early-morning crassness.”
“Ellie is not here to stop me, this time,” he said. “I could brutalize you.”
“You really put the ‘soft’ in ‘software’ sometimes, Five-Nine.”
The mess was now a medium-sized moistened area on the blue-black carpet. The robot got to his feet.
“I did not come here to engage in an argument with you.”
She crossed her arms as the morning sun peeked over the Eastern Sea. Glittering gold and silver.
“So why are you here?”
“Maybe I am here to exhaust you and test your patience so our handler does not have to.”
“Uh huh.”
“You should not be so certain of the ground you stand on; there is danger in assumption.”
“Are you trying to threaten me or warn me, little metal man?” Queen unfolded her arms, her hands dangling close to her hips.
“Ellie ordered me over.” He walked to the kitchen, wrung the towelette out over the stainless steel sink.
Her fingers caressed the stitching of her black jeans. “A message?”
“A message. Our employer is a rising star in the business world. She may not have favored her father in the slightest, but something of the late Wayne’s adroitness was passed on. As our work has shown, it has been slow going on the assassination front. I have only ten registered kills. Many of them were low level factotums, security personnel, and clueless programmers – no one threatening.”
This was true; Queen had never dreamed of making so much money for such easy work, and it had baffled her how much of a trail her targets left. They were not cautious in the way an upper-level manager or security chief was. They were easily
located, and in a timely fashion. Until tonight, she was able to come home early after every hunt and get herself inordinately well-rested for the next day. A major change of pace from her last job, where high priority liquidations were built on sleepless nights of info gathering and stalking.
“It’s the same for me. I figured the targets were starting to spread rumors among their peers. Slander is generally not tolerated among the lower classes in this city.”
“My, and here I thought I would be forced to explain everything to you,” Five-Nine said. “Our Syntheia shows the quality of foresight. A superb attribute in a leader.”
“Sure is.”
Queen looked out over the field of double-helix skyscrapers and the sun cresting the grey clouds between them. The distant shore was already peopled with sails and yachts.
Five-Nine wandered back and stood by the window. Only a small share of the true light from the sun could penetrate the glasses’ auto-tinting, and that portion was enough to cause a shimmer on the robot’s titanium casing.
“You do not care about who you kill,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Not anymore.”
Her words caught in her throat, tasted acidic. She swallowed hard and failed to mask her disgust.
“What’s the message?”
“You sound as if you harbor some latent resentment.” He scratched something off the glass. “Surely three months is adequate to overcome the greatest of lusts.”
“You f–”
She interrupted herself. The machine was trying to draw out a dangerous truth from her. She folded her arms again.
“It wasn’t lust.”
“Love, then? Love is just lust with an unreasonable amount of time and money thrown at it.”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about, Five-Nine.”
“No one does; that is why we yammer.”
“Wow, can you be more cryptic?”
“Is that a request? Because yes, I can.”
She sighed deeply. “What is Ellie busy with that she couldn’t meet me in person? My place has a private landing bay.”
“Matters of state and business, I am afraid.” The robot clasped his wrists at his back like a high-class attendant. He rocked back and forth on the heels of his shoes. “She is finding her position as Senior Liquidationist greatly cumbersome, but she did tell me to thank you for her invitation to your housewarming party.”
“You told me that during the party. Remember?”
Five-Nine was quiescent, radar green circles reflected on the spotless window. “I wiped that memory a month ago.”
“What? Why?”
“I can no longer tell you, but if I were to presume, then intoxication and loose lips were probably involved.”
Queen bristled. “It couldn’t have been that. I’m a quiet drunk.”
“That is what noisy drunks say. I do not erase my banks unless the memory is particularly compromising.”
“Compromising, huh?”
“Please do not turn me into an outlet for your single woman woes,” Five-Nine said. “It is an insult to your sex.”
Queen clicked her tongue, then yawned into her palm. She joined Five-Nine by her expansive window. Hover traffic was beginning to swarm out of the private bays carved into the roofs of the surrounding skyscrapers. She watched the commuters merge soundlessly into lanes defined by holographic signage. How lucky I am to spend the rest of my day indoors.
“What a life,” she muttered.
The robot nodded. “Those men and women are on the nine-to-five routine. How wholesomely boring.”
“There’s no danger in what they do, as long as they keep with regulation and don’t speak out of turn.” Queen tapped her forefinger against the darkened glass. “For me, for you, every day is uncertainty. Every day is a chance.”
“And after the day is done, we return home, and know that we are worthy of what we have. Slaying a lover does not usually come with such a bonus. You made the correct choice, given the alternative.”
“There was no alternative. There was the illusion of one, but it never really existed.”
“Imponderables are the poison of living.”
She half laughed. The robot was developing a knack for waxing poetic. “Poison, or lifeblood?”
“They are one and the same, for you.”
“Eventually you’ll break down, too, partner.”
“Doubtlessly,” he agreed. “As long as society stays afloat and I keep finding employers in need of my services, obsolescence will not find me for some time.”
She considered him for a few quiet moments. Then, “What’s it like, to live as long as you have?”
“The early memories are difficult to recall,” he said. “There are great gaps where I see walls of meaningless data and fragmentations. I have tried to reach back to my origin, to sift through the code and come up with a beginning that makes sense. But the deeper I go, the less inclination I have to dig.”
She smirked, turned so her back was against the glass. “You’re afraid.”
“Not fear. Something close, though. At the core of what I am, there is an answer I am not permitted to find. I have been used in many ways by organizations and countries possessing only the vaguest relevance to the conglomerates of today. Yet, the encryptions remain as ironclad as when the information was first passed on to me for safekeeping.”
“Did Chamber try to access those secrets? You don’t mention him anymore.”
“One master is the same as the next.” He shrugged. “But no, he did not. He knew about them, but his interests were reconnaissance and security.”
“Obviously wasn’t as interested as he should have been,” she said, a satisfied edge to her tone.
“Ah, but I was not there when he needed me the most. Had I been, well, who can say? You have proven yourself resourceful in disposing of me in the past.”
“I’d rather forget about all that.”
In an oddly human gesture, Five-Nine raised one hand up in surrender. “I am able if you are. Though, I do wish to keep some of the memories. A sentimental quirk in the programs.” He rattled his digits over his throat. “I should try to isolate that anomaly sometime.”
“You don’t want to go too deep.” The arctic chill of her AC switched on overhead. She folded her arms tighter to her chest, her fingers curled into fists. “It’s not like anyone can pull you out of your own head.”
“Maybe you are correct. As much as it pains me to admit.”
“Which is zero, considering you can’t feel pain.”
He made a sound that was a cross between a grinding hard drive and a turbulent river. Queen laughed.
“It was a joke!”
She raised both hands without really thinking about it, and quickly refolded them into place against her jacket when she realized from whom the gesture had derived. The man she didn’t want to remember. She inhaled, exhaled slowly to purge herself of the thoughts. They would keep returning, time and time again, in the wake of a gnawing feeling of guilt and, worse, justification.
She watched a premium-class taxi break from the flow of traffic and begin the docking procedure into her building, forty floors above her. The taxi would hover outside for some time, thanks to the stringent security measures her building had in place. Having a personal vehicle registered with security meant she could come and go as she pleased, when she pleased. The poor bastard in that cab, even with the proper papers, was likely fumbling to find and scan his CID at that moment.
“I shall leave you to your refrigerated trans-fat congealment.” Five-Nine said. “There are matters requiring a certain degree of haste.”
“Not too much, I hope.”
“I would not be here if it were that pressing, have no worry,” he said, and turned from the darkened window.
She walked him to the door. “Can’t talk about it, I’m guessing?”
“You are guessing right.” His hand waved over the motion sensor built in be
side the autodoor. Yellow light from the hallway bled onto dark tile. The floor was silent, and she heard no voices.
Queen said, “So was there ever a message from Ellie, or did she just want me to know you could break into my apartment?”
He stepped out into the light, his polished shoes whispering upon a carpet that always appeared immaculate, whether she arrived home at noon or midnight. If his eyes could have smiled they would have, and he tipped his fedora as an answer.
“Message received.”
She leaned against the doorframe and looked down each side of the hallway. As she suspected, there was nothing but the number-lights above the doors. Her floor seemed to be inhabited by people working bizarre shifts or telecommuting.
“I’ll admit it’s a novel way to make a girl feel safe and comfortable.”
“I was recently certified in bedside manner,” the robot oozed.
“Oh, great! Save me the clinic bill.”
“Madam, you have issues I could never resolve.”
Her dimpled smile split open.
“You see, that is why I am still around. Everyone needs the catharsis of a robo-jester.”
“Jesters don’t usually run around with Super Glocks.”
“My own form of insurance. My parts are not cheap.”
She shook her head in exaggerated disbelief. “You’d think they’d have robotic insurance these days.”
Five-Nine pulled back the left sleeve of his trench coat and looked at a silver wristwatch, ticking away. Old gadget on an old machine.
“We should continue this discussion when I am next available.”
Queen nodded. “Call whenever, as long as you do call first.”
“Always with the rules.”
He waved over his shoulder, and she replied likewise, watching until he boarded the express elevator. Then she retreated into her unit and locked the autodoor.
She touched her fingertips to the anodized, black steel that divided her from the outside world. Felt how cold and calculating and so like her it had become. Three months ago, she wouldn’t have let him leave alive, and now she was regarding him as an equal. It made her want to vomit. Their silly jabs at one another were a game and little else. There was nothing below the surface, no underlying hatred as she had carried before. Even the silent rage which had brought her to this new life was dissipating. Content in her way of life, there was a logic working within that asked her to simply enjoy this turn of events for as long as it lasted. Liability or not, she had been tested and come out under the light of loyalty.
