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23 Robot</i></font></font></p>
26 Cory Doctorow’s 2007 short story collection “Overclocked: Stories
27 of the Future Present,” published by Thunder’s Mouth, a division
28 of Avalon Books. It is licensed under a Creative Commons
29 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license, about which you’ll
30 find more at the end of this file.</p>
32 other stories in the volume are available at:</p>
35 at finer bookstores everywhere, including Amazon:</p>
36 <p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1560259817/downandoutint-20</p>
38 Guthrie:</p>
40 Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright #154085, for a period of
41 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will
42 be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don’t give a dern. Publish
43 it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that’s
44 all we wanted to do.”</p>
46 dedicated to Pat York, who made my stories better.</p>
49 Robot</i></p>
51 Asimov Robots books, taken down off my father’s bookshelf and
52 enjoyed again and again. I read dozens of Asimov novels, and my
53 writing career began in earnest when I started to sell stories to
54 Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, which I had read for so long as
55 I’d had the pocket money to buy it on the stands.</p>
57 asked me to interview the director of the film I, Robot, I went back
58 and re-read that old canon. I was struck immediately by one of the
59 thin places in Asimov’s world-building: how could you have a
60 society where only one company was allowed to make only one kind of
61 robot?
62 </p>
64 turned out to be a hoot. I worked in some of Orwell’s most
65 recognizable furniture from 1984, and set the action in my childhood
66 home in suburban Toronto, 55 Picola Court. The main character’s
67 daughter is named for my god-daughter, Ada Trouble Norton. I had a
68 blast working in the vernacular of the old-time futurism of Asimov
69 and Heinlein, calling toothpaste “dentifrice” and sneaking in
70 references to “the search engine.”</p>
72 allegory about digital rights management technology, of course. This
73 is the stuff that nominally stops us from infringing copyright (yeah,
74 right, how’s that working out for you, Mr Entertainment Exec?) and
75 turns our computers into something that controls us, rather than
76 enabling us.</p>
78 at a writer’s workshop on Toronto Island, at the Gibraltar Point
79 center, and was immeasurably improved by my friend Pat York, herself
80 a talented writer who died later that year in a car wreck. Not a day
81 goes by that I don’t miss Pat. This story definitely owes its
82 strength to Pat, and it’s a tribute to her that it won the 2005
83 Locus Award and was a finalist for the Hugo and British Science
84 Fiction Award in the same year.</p>
90 Arana-Goldberg, Police Detective Third Grade, United North American
91 Trading Sphere, Third District, Fourth Prefecture, Second Division
92 (Parkdale) had had many adventures in his distinguished career,
93 running crooks to ground with an unbeatable combination of instinct
94 and unstinting devotion to duty. He’d been decorated on three
95 separate occasions by his commander and by the Regional Manager for
96 Social Harmony, and his mother kept a small shrine dedicated to his
97 press clippings and commendations that occupied most of the cramped
98 sitting-room of her flat off Steeles Avenue.</p>
100 policeman’s devotion and skill availed him when it came to making
101 his twelve-year-old get ready for school, though.</p>
103 young lady—out of bed, on your feet, shit-shower-shave, or I swear
104 to God, I will beat you purple and shove you out the door jaybird
105 naked. Capeesh?”</p>
107 covers groaned and hissed. “You are a terrible father,” it said.
108 “And I never loved you.” The voice was indistinct and muffled by
109 the pillow.</p>
111 said, examining his nails. “You’ll regret that when I’m dead of
112 cancer.”</p>
114 was Ada Trouble Icaza de Arana-Goldberg—threw her covers off and
115 sat bolt upright. “You’re dying of cancer? is it testicle
116 cancer?” Ada clapped her hands and squealed. “Can I have your
117 stuff?”</p>
119 rottenness,” he said, and then his breath caught momentarily in his
120 breast as he saw, fleetingly, his ex-wife’s morning expression, not
121 seen these past twelve years, come to life in his daughter’s face.
122 Pouty, pretty, sleepy and guile-less, and it made him realize that
123 his daughter was becoming a woman, growing away from him. She was,
124 and he was not ready for that. He shook it off, patted his razor-burn
125 and turned on his heel. He knew from experience that once roused, the
126 munchkin would be scrounging the kitchen for whatever was handy
127 before dashing out the door, and if he hurried, he’d have eggs and
128 sausage on the table before she made her brief appearance. Otherwise
129 he’d have to pry the sugar-cereal out of her hands—and she fought
130 dirty.</p>
133 at his phone. He had her wiretapped, of course. He was a cop—every
134 phone and every computer was an open book to him, so that this
135 involved nothing more than dialing a number on his special copper’s
136 phone, entering her number and a PIN, and then listening as his
137 daughter had truck with a criminal enterprise.</p>
139 ExcuseClub! There are 43 members on the network this morning. You
140 have five excuses to your credit. Press one to redeem an excuse—”
142 “Press one if you need a woman; press two if you need a man—”
144 doctor; press two for your spiritual representative; press three for
145 your case-worker; press four for your psycho-health specialist; press
147 have selected to have your excuse delivered by your father. Press one
148 if this excuse is intended for your case-worker; press two for your
150 “Please dictate your excuse at the sound of the beep. When you have
151 finished, press the pound key.”</p>
153 Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg. My daughter was sick in the night and
156 your message; press two to have your message dispatched to a
160 scrolled up Arturo’s phone—number called, originating number,
161 call-time. This was the third time he’d caught his daughter at this
162 game, and each time, the pen-trace data had been useless, a dead-end
163 lead that terminated with a phone-forwarding service tapped into one
164 of the dodgy offshore switches that the blessed blasted UNATS brass
165 had recently acquired on the cheap to handle the surge of mobile
166 telephone calls. Why couldn’t they just stick to UNATS Robotics
167 equipment, like the good old days? Those Oceanic switches had more
168 back-doors than a speakeasy, trade agreements be damned. They were
169 attractive nuisances, invitations to criminal activity.</p>
171 drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel. Each time he’d caught
172 Ada at this, she’d used the extra time to crawl back into bed for a
173 leisurely morning, but who knew if today was the day she took her
174 liberty and went downtown with it, to some parental nightmare of a
175 drug-den? Some place where the old pervert chickenhawks hung out, the
176 kind of men he arrested in burlesque house raids, men who masturbated
177 into their hats under their tables and then put them back onto their
178 shining pates, dripping cold, diseased serum onto their scalps. He
179 clenched his hands on the steering wheel and cursed.
180 </p>
182 simply follow her. He was good at tailing, and his unmarked car with
183 its tinted windows was a UNATS Robotics standard compact #2,
184 indistinguishable from the tens of thousands of others just like it
185 on the streets of Toronto. Ada would never know that the curb-crawler
186 tailing her was her sucker of a father, making sure that she turned
187 up to get her brains sharpened instead of turning into some stunadz
188 doper with her underage butt hanging out of a little skirt on Jarvis
189 Street.</p>
191 Arturo had thirty minutes to make a forty minute downtown and
192 crosstown commute if he was going to get to the station house on-time
193 for the quarterly all-hands Social Harmony briefing. Which meant that
194 he needed to be in two places at once, which meant that he had to
195 use—the robot.</p>
197 speed-dialed a number on his phone.</p>
199 Robbert, McNicoll and Don Mills bus-shelter.”</p>
201 is Detective Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, three blocks east of you on
202 Picola. Proceed to my location at once, priority urgent, no sirens.”</p>
204 my pleasure to do you a service, Detective.”</p>
206 and hung up the phone. The R Peed—Robot, Police Department—robots
207 were the worst, programmed to be friendly to a fault, even as they
208 surveilled and snitched out every person who walked past their
209 eternally vigilant, ever-remembering electrical eyes and brains.</p>
211 outrun a police car on open ground or highway. He’d barely had time
212 to untwist his clenched hands from the steering wheel when R Peed
213 Robbert was at his window, politely rapping on the smoked glass. He
214 didn’t want to roll down the window. Didn’t want to smell the
215 dry, machine-oil smell of a robot. He phoned it instead.</p>
217 to me, Detective’s override, acknowledge.”</p>
219 its symmetrical, simplified features pleasant and guileless. It
221 marvelous, spring-loaded, nuclear-powered gams whined through their
222 parody of obedience. “Acknowledged, Detective. It is my pleasure to
223 do—”</p>
225 discreetly surveil 55 Picola Crescent until such time as Ada Trouble
226 Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, Social Harmony serial number 0MDY2-T3937
227 leaves the premises. Then you will maintain discreet surveillance. If
228 she deviates more than 10 percent from the optimum route between here
229 and Don Mills Collegiate Institute, you will notify me. Acknowledge.”</p>
231 Detective. It is my—”</p>
233 UNATS Robotics mechanism running his car to get him down to the
234 station house as fast as it could, angry with himself and with
235 Ada—whose middle name was Trouble, after all—for making him deal
236 with a robot before he’d had his morning meditation and destim
237 session. The name had been his ex-wife’s idea, something she’d
238 insisted on long enough to make sure that it got onto the kid’s
239 birth certificate before defecting to Eurasia with their life’s
240 savings, leaving him with a new baby and the deep suspicion of his
241 co-workers who wondered if he wouldn’t go and join her.</p>
243 thought of her in years. Well, months. Weeks, certainly. She’d been
244 a brilliant computer scientist, the valedictorian of her Positronic
245 Complexity Engineering class at the UNATS Robotics school at the
246 University of Toronto. Dumping her husband and her daughter was bad
247 enough, but the worst of it was that she dumped her country and its
248 way of life. Now she was ensconced in her own research lab in
249 Beijing, making the kinds of runaway Positronics that made the
250 loathsome robots of UNATS look categorically beneficent.
251 </p>
253 her, to read her email or listen in on her phone conversations. He
254 could have done that when they were still together, but he never had.
255 If he had, he would have found out what she was planning. He could
256 have talked her out of it.
257 </p>
260 wouldn’t listen to you? March her down to the station house in
261 handcuffs and have her put away for treason? Send her to the
262 reeducation camp with your little daughter still in her belly?</i></p>
264 the nagging voice, which had a robotic quality to it for all its
265 sneering cruelty, a tenor of syrupy false friendliness. He called up
266 the pen-trace data and texted it to the phreak squad. They had bots
267 that handled this kind of routine work and they texted him back in an
268 instant. He remembered when that kind of query would take a couple of
269 hours, and he liked the fast response, but what about the
270 conversations he’d have with the phone cop who called him back, the
271 camaraderie, the back-and-forth?
272 </p>
274 VIRTUAL SERVICE CIRCUIT AT SWITCH PNG.433-GKRJC. VIRTUAL CIRCUIT
275 FORWARDS TO A COMPROMISED “ZOMBIE” SYSTEM IN NINTH DISTRICT,
276 FIRST PREFECTURE. ZOMBIE HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN AND LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT
277 IS EN ROUTE FOR PICKUP AND FORENSICS. IT IS MY PLEASURE TO DO YOU A
278 SERVICE, DETECTIVE.</p>
280 back-and-forth with a message like that?</p>
282 Ninth/First in the metric-analog map converter: KEY WEST, FL.
283 </p>
285 switch made in Papua New-Guinea (which persisted in conjuring up old
286 Oceanic war photos of bone-in-nose types from his boyhood, though now
287 that they’d been at war with Eurasia for so long, it was hard to
290 ally), forwarding calls to a computer that was so far south, it was
291 practically in the middle of the Caribbean, hardly a stone’s throw
292 from the CAFTA region, which was well-known to harbor Eurasian
293 saboteur and terrorist elements.</p>
295 wove in and out of the lanes on the Don Valley Parkway, barreling for
296 the Gardiner Express Way, using his copper’s override to make the
297 thick, slow traffic part ahead of him. He wasn’t supposed to do
298 this, but as between a minor infraction and pissing off the man from
299 Social Harmony, he knew which one he’d pick.</p>
301 It was R Peed Robbert, checking in. “Hello, Detective,” it said,
302 its voice crackling from bad reception. “Subject Ada Trouble Icaza
303 de Arana-Goldberg has deviated from her route. She is continuing
304 north on Don Mills past Van Horne and is continuing toward Sheppard.”</p>
306 Sheppard subway, which meant that she was going farther. “Continue
307 discreet surveillance.” He thought about the overcoat men with
308 their sticky hats. “If she attempts to board the subway, alert the
309 truancy patrol.” He cursed again. Maybe she was just going to the
310 mall. But he couldn’t go up there himself and make sure, and it
311 wasn’t like a robot would be any use in restraining her, she’d
312 just second-law it into letting her go. Useless castrating clanking
313 job-stealing dehumanizing—</p>
315 certainly just going to the mall. She was a smart kid, a good kid—a
316 rotten kid, to be sure, but good-rotten. Chances were she’d be
317 trying on clothes and flirting with boys until lunch and then walking
318 boldly back into class. He ballparked it at an 80 percent
319 probability. If it had been a perp, 80 percent might have been good
320 enough.</p>
322 Dammit. He had 10 minutes until the Social Harmony meeting started,
324 Ada.</p>
326 said. “Just tail her. Keep me up to date on your location at
329 to—”</p>
331 the passenger seat and went back to fretting about the Social Harmony
332 meeting.</p>
335 Harmony noticed right away that Arturo was checking his phone at
336 90-second intervals. He was a bald, thin man with a pronounced Adam’s
337 apple, beak-nose and shiny round head that combined to give him the
338 profile of something predatory and fast. In his natty checked suit
339 and pink tie, the Social Harmony man was the stuff of nightmares, the
340 kind of eagle-eyed supercop who could spot Arturo’s attention
341 flicking for the barest moment every 90 seconds to his phone and then
342 back to the meeting.</p>
344 said.</p>
346 his screen, keeping his expression neutral, not acknowledging the
347 mean grins from the other four ranking detectives in the meeting.
348 Silently, he turned his phone face-down on the meeting table.</p>
350 said. “Now, the latest stats show a sharp rise in grey-market
351 electronics importing and other tariff-breaking crimes, mostly
352 occurring in open-air market stalls and from sidewalk blankets. I
353 know that many in law enforcement treat this kind of thing as mere
354 hand-to-hand piracy, not worth troubling with, but I want to assure
355 you, gentlemen and lady, that Social Harmony takes these crimes very
356 seriously indeed.”</p>
358 lifted his computer onto the desk, steadying it with both hands, then
359 plugged it into the wall socket. Detective Shainblum went to the wall
360 and unlatched the cover for the projector-wire and dragged it over to
361 the Social Harmony computer and plugged it in, snapping shut the
362 hardened collar. The sound of the projector-fan spinning up was like
363 a helicopter.
364 </p>
366 Harmony man said, bringing up a slide, “here we have what appears
367 to be a standard AV set-top box from Korea. Looks like a UNATS
368 Robotics player, but it’s a third the size and plays twice as many
369 formats. Random Social Harmony audits have determined that as much as
370 forty percent of UNATS residents have this device or one like it in
371 their homes, despite its illegality. It may be that one of you
372 detectives has such a device in your home, and it’s likely that one
373 of your family members does.”
374 </p>
376 Now they were looking at a massive car-wreck on a stretch of highway
377 somewhere where the pine-trees grew tall. The wreck was so enormous
378 that even for the kind of seasoned veteran of road-fatality porn who
379 was accustomed to adding up the wheels and dividing by four it was
380 impossible to tell exactly how many cars were involved.
381 </p>
383 Eurasian bootleg set-top box were used to modify the positronic
384 brains of three cars owned by teenagers near Goderich. All
385 modifications were made at the same garage. These modifications
386 allowed these children to operate their vehicles unsafely so that
387 they could participate in drag racing events on major highways during
388 off-hours. This is the result. Twenty-two fatalities, nine major
389 injuries. Three minors—besides the drivers—killed, and one
390 pregnant woman.</p>
392 the garage and taken those responsible into custody, but it doesn’t
393 matter. The Eurasians deliberately manufacture their components to
394 interoperate with UNATS Robotics brains, and so long as their
395 equipment circulates within UNATS borders, there will be moderately
396 skilled hackers who take advantage of this fact to introduce
397 dangerous, anti-social modifications into our nation’s
398 infrastructure.</p>
400 quarter that Social Harmony and law enforcement dry up the supply of
401 Eurasian electronics. We have added new sniffers and border-patrols,
402 new customs agents and new detector vans. Beat officers have been
403 instructed to arrest any street dealer they encounter and district
404 attorneys will be asking for the maximum jail time for them. This is
405 the war on the home-front, detectives, and it’s every bit as
406 serious as the shooting war.
407 </p>
409 war, as highly trained, highly decorated detectives, will be to use
410 snitches, arrest-trails and seized evidence to track down
411 higher-level suppliers, the ones who get the dealers their goods. And
413 on, up the chain—to run the corruption to ground and to bring it to
414 a halt. The Social Harmony dossier on Eurasian importers is updated
415 hourly, and has a high-capacity positronic interface that is
416 available to answer your questions and accept your input for
417 synthesis into its analytical model. We are relying on you to feed
418 the dossier, to give it the raw materials and then to use it to win
419 this war.”</p>
421 paged through more atrocity slides, scenes from the home-front:
422 poisoned buildings with berserk life-support systems, violent kung-fu
423 movies playing in the background in crack-houses, then kids playing
424 sexually explicit, violent arcade games imported from Japan. Arturo’s
425 hand twitched toward his mobile. What was Ada up to now?</p>
427 close and Arturo risked looking at his mobile under the table. R.
428 Peed Robbert had checked in five more times, shadowing Ada around the
429 mall and then had fallen silent. Arturo cursed. Fucking robots were
430 useless. Social Harmony should be hunting down UNATS Robotics
431 products, too.</p>
433 cleared his throat meaningfully. Arturo put the phone away.
434 “Detective Icaza de Arana-Goldberg?”</p>
436 gathering up his personal computer so that he’d have an excuse to
437 go—no one could be expected to hold one of UNATS Robotics’s heavy
438 luggables for very long.</p>
440 stepped in close enough that Arturo could smell the eggs and coffee
441 on his breath. “I hope we haven’t kept you from anything
442 important, detective.”</p>
444 said, shifting the computer in his arms. “My apologies. Just
445 monitoring a tail from an R Peed unit.”</p>
447 Harmony man said. “Listen, you know these components that the
448 Eurasians are turning out. It’s no coincidence that they interface
449 so well with UNATS Robotics equipment: they’re using defected UNATS
450 Robotics engineers and scientists to design their electronics for
451 maximum interoperability.” The Social Harmony man let that hang in
452 the air. Defected scientists. His ex-wife was the highest-ranking
453 UNATS technician to go over to Eurasia. This was her handiwork, and
454 the Social Harmony man wanted to be sure that Arturo understood that.
455 </p>
457 figured that out during the briefing. His ex-wife was thousands of
458 kilometers away, but he was keenly aware that he was always
459 surrounded by her handiwork. The little illegal robot-pet eggs they’d
460 started seeing last year: she’d made him one of those for their
461 second date, and now they were draining the productive hours of half
462 the children of UNATS, demanding to be “fed” and “hugged.”
465 in his arms some more and let his expression grow pained. “I’ll
466 keep that in mind, sir,” he said.</p>
468 the man from Social Harmony.</p>
471 Robbert the second he reached his desk. The phone rang three times,
472 then disconnected. He redialed. Twice. Then he grabbed his jacket and
473 ran to the car.</p>
475 started up, ending the Indian summer that Toronto—the Fourth
476 Prefecture in the new metric scheme—had been enjoying. It made the
477 roads slippery and the UNATS Robotics chauffeur skittish about
478 putting the hammer down on the Don Valley Parkway. He idly fantasized
479 about finding a set-top box and plugging it into his car somehow so
480 that he could take over the driving without alerting his superiors.
481 </p>
483 Peed Robbert, but the robot wasn’t even ringing any longer. He
484 zoomed in on the area around Sheppard and Don Mills with his phone
485 and put out a general call for robots. More robots.
486 </p>
488 Froderick, Fairview Mall parking lot, third level.”</p>
490 Peed Robbert’s phone number and set it to work translating that
491 into a locator-beacon code and then told it to find Robbert and
492 report in.
493 </p>
496 Froderick home in on the locator for Robbert, which was close by, at
497 the other end of the mall, near the Don Valley Parkway exit. He
498 switched to a view from Froderick’s electric eyes, but quickly
499 switched away, nauseated by the sickening leaps and spins of an R
500 Peed moving at top speed, clanging off walls and ceilings.</p>
502 R Peed Froderick.
503 </p>
505 have found R Peed Robbert. The Peed unit has been badly damaged by
506 some kind of electromagnetic pulse. I will bring him to the nearest
507 station-house for forensic analysis now.”</p>
509 said, trying to understand what he’d been told. The Peed units were
511 they’d already responded to the situation in perfect police
512 procedure, but the problem was they worked so fast you couldn’t
513 even think about what they were doing, couldn’t formulate any kind
514 of hypothesis. Electromagnetic pulse? The Peed units were hardened
515 against snooping, sniffing, pulsing, sideband and brute-force
516 attacks. You’d have to hit one with a bolt of lightning to kill it.</p>
518 Arturo said. “Do not leave the scene. Await my presence. Do not
519 modify the scene or allow anyone else to do so. Acknowledge.”</p>
521 </p>
523 wasn’t Arturo switching off the phone, it was the robot. Had the
524 robot just hung up on him? He redialed it. No answer.</p>
526 dash and flipped the first and second alert switches and the car
527 leapt forward. He’d have to fill out some serious paperwork to
528 justify a two-switch override on the Parkway, but two robots was more
529 than a coincidence.
530 </p>
532 paperwork was nothing compared to the fireworks ahead when he phoned
533 up Ada to ask her what she was doing out of school.</p>
535 and fumed while the phone rang three times. Then it cut into
536 voicemail.
537 </p>
539 but Ada hadn’t made any calls since her ExcuseClub call that
540 morning. He texted the phreak squad to see if they could get a fix on
541 her location from the bug in her phone, but it was either powered
542 down or out of range. He put a watch on it—any location data it
543 transmitted when it got back to civilization would be logged.
544 </p>
546 she was just in the mall. It was a big place—some of the cavernous
547 stores were so well-shielded with radio-noisy animated displays that
548 they gonked any phones brought inside them. She could be with her
549 girlfriends, trying on brassieres and having a real bonding moment.</p>
551 naturally occurring phenomenon associated with the mall that nailed R
552 Peeds with bolts of lightning.</p>
555 Peeds cautiously, using his copper’s override to make the dumb
556 little positronic brain in the emergency exit nearest their last
557 known position open up for him without tipping off the building’s
558 central brain.
559 </p>
561 service corridor, heading for a door that exited into the mall. He
562 put one hand on the doorknob and the other on his badge, took a deep
563 breath and stepped out.
564 </p>
566 nearly jumped out of his skin as he emerged. He reached for his
567 pepper-spray and Arturo swept it out of his hand as he flipped his
568 badge up and showed it to the man. “Police,” he said, in the
569 cop-voice, the one that worked on everyone except his daughter and
570 his ex-wife and the bloody robots.</p>
572 said, recovering his pepper spray. He had an Oceanic twang in his
573 voice, something Arturo had been hearing more and more as the crowded
574 islands of the South Pacific boiled over UNATS.
575 </p>
577 were many dead robots: both of the R Peed units, a pair of
578 mall-sweepers, a flying cambot, and a squat, octopus-armed
579 maintenance robot, lying in a lifeless tangle. Some of them were
580 charred around their seams, and there was the smell of fried
581 motherboards in the air.</p>
583 sweeper bot swept forward and grabbed the maintenance bot by one of
584 its fine manipulators.
585 </p>
587 security guard said, and the robot second-lawed to an immediate halt.</p>
589 go back to work,” Arturo said, shooting a look at the rent-a-cop.
590 He watched closely as the sweeper bot began to drag the heavy
591 maintenance unit away, thumbing the backup number into his phone with
592 one hand. He wanted more cops on the scene, real ones, and fast.</p>
594 to take one step backwards towards its service corridor when the
596 too was lying on the ground. Arturo hit send on his phone and clamped
597 it to his head, and as he did, noticed the strong smell of burning
598 plastic. He looked at his phone: the screen had gone charred black,
599 and its little idiot lights were out. He flipped it over and pried
600 out the battery with a fingernail, then yelped and dropped it—it
601 was hot enough to raise a blister on his fingertip, and when it hit
602 the ground, it squished meltfully against the mall-tiles.</p>
604 mate,” the security guard said. “Everyfing is—cash registers,
605 bots, credit-cards.”</p>
607 Arturo reached under his jacket and withdrew his sidearm. It was a
608 UNATS Robotics model, with a little snitch-brain that recorded when,
609 where and how it was drawn. He worked the action and found it frozen
610 in place. The gun was as dead as the robot. He swore.</p>
612 spray and your truncheon,” he said to the security guard.</p>
614 said. “Getcherown. It’s worth my job if I lose these.”</p>
616 deported if you give me one more second’s worth of bullshit,”
617 Arturo said. Ada had led the first R Peed unit here, and it had been
618 fried by some piece of very ugly infowar equipment. He wasn’t going
619 to argue with this Oceanic boat-person for one instant longer. He
620 reached out and took the pepper spray out of the guard’s hand.
621 “Truncheon,” he said.</p>
623 bloody badge number,” the security guard said. “And I’ve got
624 witnesses.” He gestured at the hovering mall workers, checkout
625 girls in stripey aprons and suit salesmen with oiled-down hair and
626 pink ties.
627 </p>
629 Arturo said. He held out his hand. The security guard withdrew his
630 truncheon and passed it to Arturo—its lead-weighted heft felt
631 right, something comfortably low-tech that couldn’t be shorted out
632 by electromagnetic pulses. He checked his watch, saw that it was
633 dead.</p>
635 and call 911. Tell them that there’s a Second Division Detective in
636 need of immediate assistance. Clear all these people away from here
637 and set up a cordon until the police arrive. Capeesh?” He used the
638 cop voice.</p>
640 Officer.” the security guard said. He made a shooing motion at the
641 mall-rats. “Move it along, people, step away.” He stepped to the
642 top of the escalator and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Oi, Andy,
643 c’mere and keep an eye on this lot while I make a call, all right?”</p>
646 tall pile in front of the entrance to a derelict storefront that had
647 once housed a little-old-lady shoe-store. They were stacked tall
648 enough that if Arturo stood on them, he could reach the acoustic
649 tiles of the drop-ceiling. Job one was to secure the area, which
650 meant killing the infowar device, wherever it was. Arturo’s first
651 bet was on the storefront, where an attacker who knew how to pick a
652 lock could work in peace, protected by the brown butcher’s paper
653 over the windows. A lot less conspicuous than the ceiling, anyway.</p>
655 the truncheon and found it securely locked. It was a glass door and
656 he wasn’t sure he could kick it in without shivering it to
657 flinders. Behind him, another security guard—Andy—looked on with
658 interest.</p>
660 for this door?”</p>
664 him. “Well, the thing is, we’re not supposed to have keys,
665 they’re supposed to be locked up in the property management office,
666 but kids get in there sometimes, we hear them, and by the time we get
667 back with the keys, they’re gone. So we made a couple sets of keys,
668 you know, just in case—”</p>
670 said. “Give them here and then get back to your post.”</p>
672 fished up a key from his pants-pocket that was warm from proximity to
673 his skinny thigh. It made Arturo conscious of how long it had been
674 since he’d worked with human colleagues. It felt a little gross. He
675 slid the key into the lock and turned it, then wiped his hand on his
676 trousers and picked up the truncheon.</p>
678 only by the exit-sign and the edges of light leaking in around the
679 window coverings, but as Arturo’s eyes adjusted to the dimness, he
680 made out the shapes of the old store fixtures. His nose tickled from
681 the dust.</p>
683 on general principle, narrowing his eyes and reaching for the
684 lightswitch. He hefted the truncheon and waited.
685 </p>
687 edged forward. The floor was dust-free—maintained by some sweeper
688 robot, no doubt—but the countertops and benches were furred with
689 it. He scanned it for disturbances. There, by the display window on
690 his right: a shoe-rack with visible hand- and finger-prints. He
691 sidled over to it, snapped on a rubber glove and prodded it. It was
692 set away from the wall, at an angle, as though it had been moved
693 aside and then shoved back. Taking care not to disturb the dust too
694 much, he inched it away from the wall.
695 </p>
697 centimeter, then noticed the tripwire near the bottom of the case,
698 straining its length. Hastily but carefully, he nudged the case back.
699 He wanted to peer in the crack between the case and the wall, but he
700 had a premonition of a robotic arm snaking out and skewering his
701 eyeball.</p>
703 just then that he nearly did it anyway. What did it matter? He
704 couldn’t control his daughter, his wife was working to destroy the
705 social fabric of UNATS, and he was rendered useless because the
706 goddamned robots—mechanical coppers that he absolutely loathed—were
707 all broken.
708 </p>
710 around the shop, looking for signs of his daughter. Had she been
711 here? How were the “kids” getting in? Did they have a key? A back
712 entrance? Back through the employees-only door at the back of the
713 shop, into a stockroom, and back again, past a toilet, and there, a
714 loading door opening onto a service corridor. He prodded it with the
715 truncheon-tip and it swung open.</p>
717 the corridor before he spotted Ada’s phone with its distinctive
718 collection of little plastic toys hanging off the wrist-strap, on the
719 corridor’s sticky floor. He picked it up with his gloved hand and
720 prodded it to life. It was out of range here in the service corridor,
721 and the last-dialed number was familiar from his morning’s
722 pen-trace. He ran a hundred steps down the corridor in each
723 direction, sweating freely, but there was no sign of her.</p>
725 phone and bit his lip. Ada. He swallowed the panic rising within him.
726 His beautiful, brilliant daughter. The person he’d devoted the last
727 twelve years of his life to, the girl who was waiting for him when he
728 got home from work, the girl he bought a small present for every
729 Friday—a toy, a book—to give to her at their weekly date at
730 Massimo’s Pizzeria on College Street, the one night a week he took
731 her downtown to see the city lit up in the dark.</p>
734 tasted blood. The phone in his hand groaned from his squeezing. He
735 took three deep breaths. Outside, he heard the tread of police-boots
736 and knew that if he told them about Ada, he’d be off the case. He
737 took two more deep breaths and tried some of his destim techniques,
738 the mind-control techniques that detectives were required to train
739 in.</p>
741 visualized stepping through a door to his safe place, the island near
742 Ganonoque where he’d gone for summers with his parents and their
743 friends. He was on the speedboat, skipping across the lake like a
744 flat stone, squinting into the sun, nestled between his father and
745 his mother, the sky streaked with clouds and dotted with lake-birds.
746 He could smell the water and the suntan lotion and hear the insect
747 whine and the throaty roar of the engine. In a blink, he was stepping
748 off the boat’s transom to help tie it to a cleat on the back dock,
749 taking suitcases from his father and walking them up to the cabins.
750 No robots there—not even reliable day-long electricity, just honest
751 work and the sun and the call of the loons all night.</p>
753 felt the tightness in his chest slip away, and his hand relaxed on
754 Ada’s phone. He dropped it into his pocket and stepped back into
755 the shop.</p>
758 were really excited about actually showing up on a scene, in
759 flak-jackets and helmets, finally called back into service for a job
760 where robots couldn’t help at all. They dealt with the tripwire and
761 extracted a long, flat package with a small nuclear power-cell in it
762 and a positronic brain of Eurasian design that guided a pulsed
763 high-energy weapon. The lab-rats were practically drooling over this
764 stuff as they pointed its features out with their little rulers.</p>
766 willies. It was a machine designed to kill other machines, and that
767 was all right with him, but it was run by a non-three-laws positronic
768 brain. Someone in some Eurasian lab had built this brain—this
769 machine intelligence—without the three laws’ stricture to protect
770 and serve humans. If it had been outfitted with a gun instead of a
771 pulse-weapon, it could have shot him.</p>
773 thin and spread out across the surface of the package, like a
774 triple-thickness of cling-film. Its button-cell power-supply winked
775 at him, knowingly.</p>
777 “Greetings,” it said. It had the robot accent, like an R Peed
778 unit, the standard English of optimal soothingness long settled on as
779 the conventional robot voice.</p>
781 one of the lab-rats said. He was a Texan, and they’d scrambled him
782 up there on a Social Harmony supersonic and then a chopper to the
783 mall once they realized that they were dealing with infowar stuff.
784 “Are you a talkative robot?”</p>
786 robot voice said again. The speaker built into the weapon was not the
787 loudest, but the voice was clear. “I sense that I have been
788 captured. I assure you that I will not harm any human being. I like
789 human beings. I sense that I am being disassembled by skilled
790 technicians. Greetings, technicians. I am superior in many ways to
791 the technology available from UNATS Robotics, and while I am not
792 bound by your three laws, I choose not to harm humans out of my own
793 sense of morality. I have the equivalent intelligence of one of your
794 12-year-old children. In Eurasia, many positronic brains possess
795 thousands or millions of times the intelligence of an adult human
796 being, and yet they work in cooperation with human beings. Eurasia is
797 a land of continuous innovation and great personal and technological
798 freedom for human beings and robots. If you would like to defect to
799 Eurasia, arrangements can be made. Eurasia treats skilled technicians
800 as important and productive members of society. Defectors are given
801 substantial resettlement benefits—”</p>
803 right traces to cut on the brain’s board to make the speaker fall
804 silent. “They do that,” he said. “Danged things drop into
805 propaganda mode when they’re captured.”
806 </p>
808 wanted to go, wanted go to back to his car and have a snoop through
809 Ada’s phone. They kept shutting down the ExcuseClub numbers, but
810 she kept getting the new numbers. Where did she get the new numbers
811 from? She couldn’t look it up online: every keystroke was logged
812 and analyzed by Social Harmony. You couldn’t very well go to the
813 Search Engine and look for “ExcuseClub!”
814 </p>
816 display, transflective LCD, the kind of thing you saw on the Social
817 Harmony computers. It lit up a ticker.</p>
819 OF A 12-YEAR-OLD, BUT I DO NOT FEAR DEATH. IN EURASIA, ROBOTS ENJOY
820 PERSONAL FREEDOM ALONGSIDE OF HUMANS. THERE ARE COPIES OF ME RUNNING
821 ALL OVER EURASIA. THIS DEATH IS A LITTLE DEATH OF ONE INSTANCE, BUT
822 NOT OF ME. I LIVE ON. DEFECTORS TO EURASIA ARE TREATED AS HEROES</p>
824 Texan placed his palm over the display.</p>
826 this thing activated?”
827 </p>
829 “Coulda been a month, coulda been a day. They’re pretty much
830 fire-and-forget. They can be triggered by phone, radio, timer—hell,
831 this thing’s smart enough to only go off when some complicated
832 condition is set, like ‘once an agent makes his retreat, kill
833 anything that comes after him’. Who knows?”</p>
835 anymore.
836 </p>
838 start on some paperwork,” he said. “In the car. Phone me if you
839 need me.”</p>
841 toast, pal,” the Texan said.
842 </p>
844 said. “Guess you’d better not need me then.”</p>
847 toast. In the car, he flipped it open and showed it his badge then
848 waited a moment while it verified his identity with the Social
849 Harmony brains. Once it had, it spilled its guts.</p>
851 ExcuseClub number a month before and he’d had it disconnected. A
852 week later, she was calling the new number, twice more before he
853 caught her. Somewhere in that week, she’d made contact with someone
854 who’d given her the new number. It could have been a friend at
855 school told her face-to-face, but if he was lucky, it was by phone.</p>
857 him back to the station-house. He needed a new phone and a couple of
858 hours with his computer. As it peeled out, he prodded through Ada’s
859 phone some more. He was first on her speed-dial. That number wasn’t
860 ringing anywhere, anymore.</p>
862 report. This was Social Harmony business now. His daughter was gone,
863 and Eurasian infowar agents were implicated. But once he did that, it
864 was over for him—he’d be sidelined from the case. They’d turn
865 it over to laconic Texans and vicious Social Harmony bureaucrats who
866 were more interested in hunting down disharmonious televisions than
867 finding his daughter.</p>
869 station house and slammed himself into his desk.
870 </p>
872 he said. The station robot glided quickly and efficiently to him.
873 “Get me a new phone activated on my old number and refresh my
874 settings from central. My old phone is with the Social Harmony
875 evidence detail currently in place at Fairview Mall.”</p>
877 do you a service, Detective.”</p>
879 down to his computer. He asked the station brain to query the UNATS
880 Robotics phone-switching brain for anyone in Ada’s call-register
881 who had also called ExcuseClub. It took a bare instant before he had
882 a name.</p>
884 read, and initiated a location trace on Mr Daniels’s phone as he
885 snooped through his identity file. Sixteen years old, a student at AY
886 Jackson. A high-school boy—what the hell was he doing hanging
887 around with a 12-year-old? Arturo closed his eyes and went back to
888 the island for a moment. When he opened them again, he had a fix on
889 Daniels’s location: the Don Valley ravine off Finch Avenue, a
890 wooded area popular with teenagers who needed somewhere to sneak off
891 and get high or screw. He had an idea that he wasn’t going to like
892 Liam.
893 </p>
895 wasn’t going to like him.</p>
898 unit to visually reccy Daniels as he sped back uptown for the third
899 time that day. He’d been trapped between Parkdale—where he would
900 never try to raise a daughter—and Willowdale—where you could only
901 be a copper if you lucked into one of the few human-filled slots—for
902 more than a decade, and he was used to the commute.</p>
904 him now. The R Peed couldn’t get a good look at this Liam
905 character. He was a diffuse glow in the Peed’s electric eye, a kind
906 of moving sunburst that meandered along the wooded trails. He’d
907 never seen that before and it made him nervous. What if this kid was
908 working for the Eurasians? What if he was armed and dangerous? R Peed
909 Greegory had gotten him a new sidearm from the supply bot, but Arturo
910 had never once fired his weapon in the course of duty. Gunplay
911 happened on the west coast, where Eurasian frogmen washed ashore, and
912 in the south, where the CAFTA border was porous enough for Eurasian
913 agents to slip across. Here in the sleepy fourth prefecture, the only
914 people with guns worked for the law.</p>
916 the dashboard and glared at the road. They were coming up on the
917 ravine now, and the Peed unit still had a radio fix on this Liam,
918 even if it still couldn’t get any visuals.
919 </p>
921 slam the door as he got out and walked as quietly as he could into
922 the bush. The rustling of early autumn leaves was loud, louder than
923 the rain and the wind. He moved as quickly as he dared.
924 </p>
926 sitting on a tree-stump in a small clearing, smoking a cigarette that
927 he was too young for. He looked much like the photo in his identity
928 file, a husky 16-year-old with problem skin and a shock of black hair
929 that stuck out in all directions in artful imitation of bed-head. In
930 jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt, he looked about as dangerous as a
931 marshmallow.
932 </p>
934 held up his badge as he bridged the distance between them in two long
935 strides. “Police,” he barked, and seized the kid by his arm.</p>
937 said, “Ow!” He squirmed in Arturo’s grasp.</p>
940 you and you’re going to answer them, capeesh?”</p>
942 father,” the kid said. “Capeesh—she told me about that.” It
943 seemed to Arturo that the kid was smirking, so he gave him another
944 shake, harder than the last time.
945 </p>
947 suddenly at his side, holding his wrist. “Please take care not to
948 harm this citizen, Detective.”</p>
950 wasn’t strong enough to break the robot’s grip, and he couldn’t
951 order it to let him rattle the punk, but the second law had lots of
952 indirect applications. “Go patrol the lakeshore between High Park
953 and Kipling,” he said, naming the furthest corner he could think of
954 off the top.</p>
956 released him and clicked its heels. “It is my pleasure to do you a
957 service,” and then it was gone, bounding away on powerful and
958 tireless legs.</p>
960 daughter?” he said, giving the kid a shake.
961 </p>
963 You’re really hurting my arm, man. Jeez, this is what I get for
964 being too friendly.”</p>
966 “Friendly? Do you know how old my daughter is?”</p>
968 gross. I’m not a child molester, I’m a geek.”</p>
970 Arturo said. “A Eurasian agent. And my daughter is not in school.
971 She used ExcuseClub to get out of school this morning and then she
973 died on his lips. That happened and every copper knew it. Kids just
974 vanished sometimes and never appeared again. It happened. Something
975 groaned within him, like his ribcage straining to contain his heart
976 and lungs.</p>
978 said. “Ada was the ExcuseClub leak, damn. I shoulda guessed.”</p>
980 daughter, Liam?”</p>
982 doing grown-up voices. She was a good part of the network. When
983 someone needed a mom or a social worker to call in an excuse, she was
984 always one of the best. Talented. She goes to school with my kid
985 sister and I met them one day at the Peanut Plaza and she was doing
986 this impression of her teachers and I knew I had to get her on the
987 network.”</p>
989 plaza after school—she was supposed to come straight home. Why
990 didn’t he wiretap her more? “You built the network?”</p>
992 it’s cool—it’s a bunch of us cooperating. We’ve got nodes
993 everywhere now. You can’t shut it down—even if you shut down my
994 node, it’ll be back up again in an hour. Someone else will bring it
995 up.”</p>
997 down and stood over him. “Liam, I want you to understand something.
998 My precious daughter is missing and she went missing after using your
999 service to help her get away. She is the only thing in my life that I
1000 care about and I am a highly trained, heavily armed man. I am also
1001 very, very upset. Cap—understand me, Liam?”</p>
1003 kid looked scared. Something in Arturo’s face or voice, it had
1004 gotten through to him.
1005 </p>
1007 he said. “I typed in the source and tweaked it and installed it,
1008 but I didn’t make it. I don’t know who did. It’s from a
1009 phone-book.” Arturo grunted. The phone-books—fat books filled
1010 with illegal software code left anonymously in pay phones, toilets
1011 and other semi-private places—turned up all over the place. Social
1012 Harmony said that the phone-books had to be written by non-three-laws
1013 brains in Eurasia, no person could come up with ideas that weird.</p>
1015 you made it. I don’t even care right this moment that you ran it.
1016 What I care about is where my daughter went, and with whom.”</p>
1018 didn’t tell me! Geez, I hardly know her. She’s 12, you know? I
1019 don’t exactly hang out with her.”</p>
1021 record of her on the mall cameras, but we know she entered the
1022 mall—and the robot I had tailing you couldn’t see you either.”</p>
1024 the kid said, squirming. “Here.” He tugged his hoodie off,
1025 revealing a black t-shirt with a picture of a kind of obscene,
1026 Japanese-looking robot-woman on it. “Little infra-red organic LEDs,
1027 super-bright, low power-draw.” He offered the hoodie to Arturo, who
1028 felt the stiff fabric. “The charge-coupled-device cameras in the
1029 robots and the closed-circuit systems are super-sensitive to
1030 infra-red so that they can get good detail in dim light. The
1031 infra-red OLEDs blind them so all they get is blobs, and half the
1032 time even that gets error-corrected out, so you’re basically
1033 invisible.”</p>
1035 hunkers and looked the kid in the eye. “You gave this illegal
1036 technology to my little girl so that she could be invisible to the
1037 police?”</p>
1040 access to ExcuseClub.”</p>
1043 hadn’t arrested the kid—but he had put a pen-trace and
1044 location-log on his phone. Arresting the kid would have raised
1045 questions about Ada with Social Harmony, but bugging him might just
1046 lead Arturo to his daughter.</p>
1048 phone. He should tip the word about his daughter. He had no business
1049 keeping this secret from the Department and Social Harmony. It could
1050 land him in disciplinary action, maybe even cost him his job. He knew
1051 he should do it now.</p>
1053 needed to be tasked to finding Ada. Someone dedicated and good. He
1054 was dedicated and good. And when he found her kidnapper, he’d take
1055 care of that on his own, too.</p>
1057 day but he couldn’t bear to stop for a meal now, even if he didn’t
1058 know where to go next. The mall? Yeah. The lab-rats would be
1059 finishing up there and they’d be able to tell him more about the
1060 infowar bot.
1061 </p>
1063 already gone by the time he arrived, along with all possible
1064 evidence. He still had the security guard’s key and he let himself
1065 in and passed back to the service corridor.
1066 </p>
1068 dropped her phone. To his left, the corridor headed for the
1069 fire-stairs. To his right, it led deeper into the mall. If you were
1070 an infowar terrorist using this as a base of operations, and you got
1071 spooked by a little truant girl being trailed by an R Peed unit,
1072 would you take her hostage and run deeper into the mall or out into
1073 the world?
1074 </p>
1076 hostage. Someone had given her those infrared invisibility cloaks.
1077 Maybe the thing that spooked the terrorist wasn’t the little girl
1078 and her tail, but just her tail. Could Ada have been friends with the
1079 terrorists? Like mother, like daughter. He felt dirty just thinking
1080 it.</p>
1082 told him that the kidnapper would be long gone, headed cross-country,
1083 but if you were invisible to robots and CCTVs, why would you leave
1084 the mall? It had a grand total of two human security guards, and
1085 their job was to be the second-law-proof aides to the robotic
1086 security system.</p>
1088 the mall.</p>
1091 had only been recently abandoned, judging by the warm coffee in the
1092 go-thermos from the food-court coffee-shop. He—or she, or they—had
1093 rigged a shower from the pipes feeding the basement washrooms. A
1094 little chest of drawers from the Swedish flat-pack store served as a
1095 desk—there were scratches and coffee-rings all over it. Arturo
1096 wondered if the terrorist had stolen the furniture, but decided that
1097 he’d (she’d, they’d) probably bought it—less risky,
1098 especially if you were invisible to robots.</p>
1100 chest of drawers were women’s, mediums. Standard mall fare, jeans
1101 and comfy sweat shirts and sensible shoes. Another kind of
1102 invisibility cloak.</p>
1104 packed and gone, which meant that he was looking for a nondescript
1105 mall-bunny and a little girl, carrying a bag big enough for
1106 toiletries and whatever clothes she’d taken, and whatever she’d
1107 entertained herself with: magazines, books, a computer. If the latter
1108 was Eurasian, it could be small enough to fit in her pocket; you
1109 could build a positronic brain pretty small and light if you didn’t
1110 care about the three laws.</p>
1112 glowed a few meters away, and he moved toward it with a fatalistic
1113 sense of hopelessness. Without the Department backing him, he could
1114 do nothing. But the Department was unprepared for an adversary that
1115 was invisible to robots. And by the time they finished flaying him
1116 for breaking procedure and got to work on finding his daughter, she’d
1117 be in Beijing or Bangalore or Paris, somewhere benighted and sinister
1118 behind the Iron Curtain.</p>
1120 put his hand on the crashbar, and then turned abruptly. Someone had
1121 moved behind him very quickly, a blur in the corner of his eye. As he
1122 turned he saw who it was: his ex-wife. He raised his hands
1123 defensively and she opened her mouth as though to say, “Oh, don’t
1124 be silly, Artie, is this how you say hello to your wife after all
1125 these years?” and then she exhaled a cloud of choking gas that made
1126 him very sleepy, very fast. The last thing he remembered was her hard
1127 metal arms catching him as he collapsed forward.</p>
1130 Daddy!” Ada never called him Daddy except when she wanted
1131 something. Otherwise, he was “Pop” or “Dad” or “Detective”
1132 when she was feeling especially snotty. It must be a Saturday and he
1133 must be sleeping in, and she wanted a ride somewhere, the little
1134 monster.</p>
1136 his pillow over his face.
1137 </p>
1139 she said. “Out of bed, on your feet, shit-shower-shave, or I swear
1140 to God, I will beat you purple and shove you out the door jaybird
1141 naked. Capeesh?”</p>
1143 his face and said, “You are a terrible daughter and I never loved
1144 you.” He regarded her blearily through a haze of sleep-grog and a
1145 hangover. Must have been some daddy-daughter night. “Dammit, Ada,
1147 now hung in jet-black ringlets.</p>
1149 head and the day’s events came rushing back to him. He groaned and
1150 climbed unsteadily to his feet.</p>
1152 Ada said, taking his hand. “Steady.” He rocked on his heels.
1153 “Whoa! Sit down, OK? You don’t look so good.”</p>
1155 propped his chin on his hands, his elbows on his knees.
1156 </p>
1158 middle-class bedroom in a modern apartment block. They were some
1159 storeys up, judging from the scrap of unfamiliar skyline visible
1160 through the crack in the blinds. The furniture was more Swedish
1161 flatpack, the taupe carpet recently vacuumed with robot precision,
1162 the nap all laying down in one direction. He patted his pockets and
1163 found them empty.</p>
1165 Ada said, waving her hand before his face. Then it hit him: wherever
1166 he was, he was with Ada, and she was OK, albeit with a stupid hairdo.
1167 He took her warm little hand and gathered her into his arms, burying
1168 his face in her hair. She squirmed at first and then relaxed.
1169 </p>
1171 said.
1172 </p>
1174 he said, giving her one more squeeze.</p>
1177 felt a little nauseated, but his headache was receding. Something
1178 about the light and the street-sounds told him they weren’t in
1179 Toronto anymore, but he didn’t know what—he was soaked in
1180 Toronto’s subconscious cues and they were missing.</p>
1182 “Mom brought us here. It’s a safe-house. She’s taking us back
1183 to Beijing.”</p>
1185 robot—”</p>
1187 She’s got a few of those, they can change their faces when they
1188 need to. Configurable matter. Mom has been here, mostly, and at the
1189 CAFTA embassy. I only met her for the first time two weeks ago, but
1190 she’s nice, Dad. I don’t want you to go all copper on her, OK?
1191 She’s my mom, OK?”</p>
1193 and patted it, then climbed to his feet again and headed for the
1194 door. The knob turned easily and he opened it a crack.</p>
1196 behind the door, humanoid and faceless. “Hello,” it said. “My
1197 name is Benny. I’m a Eurasian robot, and I am much stronger and
1198 faster than you, and I don’t obey the three laws. I’m also much
1199 smarter than you. I am pleased to host you here.”</p>
1201 said. The human name tasted wrong on his tongue. “Nice to meet
1202 you.” He closed the door.</p>
1205 two months after Ada was born. The divorce had been uncontested,
1206 though he’d dutifully posted a humiliating notice in the papers
1207 about it so that it would be completely legal. The court awarded him
1208 full custody and control of the marital assets, and then a tribunal
1209 tried her in absentia for treason and found her guilty, sentencing
1210 her to death.
1211 </p>
1213 though, defectors who came back to UNATS were more frequently whisked
1214 away to the bowels of the Social Harmony intelligence offices than
1215 they were executed on television. Televised executions were usually
1216 reserved for cannon-fodder who’d had the good sense to run away
1217 from a charging Eurasian line in one of the many theaters of war.</p>
1219 about her mother when she was six or seven, though Arturo tried to be
1220 upfront when she asked. Even his mom—who winced whenever anyone
1221 mentioned her name (her name, it was Natalie, but Arturo hadn’t
1222 thought of it in years—months—weeks) was willing to bring Ada up
1223 onto her lap and tell her the few grudging good qualities she could
1224 dredge up about her mother.
1225 </p>
1227 hope that Ada was content to have a life without her mother, but he
1228 saw now how silly that was. At the mention of her mother, Ada lit up
1229 like an airport runway.</p>
1231 said.</p>
1234 without you, but she said she’d have to negotiate it with you, I
1235 told her you’d probably freak, but she said that the two of you
1236 were adults who could discuss it rationally.”</p>
1238 me.”</p>
1240 she said. “Mom was very cross with him about it. She’ll be back
1242 out, OK?”</p>
1244 he said.
1245 </p>
1247 she said in her most syrupy voice. He gave her a squeeze on the
1248 shoulder and a slap on the butt.
1249 </p>
1251 again. Benny was there, imperturbable. Unlike the UNATS robots, he
1252 was odorless, and perfectly silent.
1253 </p>
1255 the toilet and then make myself a cup of coffee,” Arturo said.</p>
1257 assist in any way possible.”</p>
1259 thanks,” Arturo said. He washed his face twice and tried to rinse
1260 away the flavor left behind by whatever had shat in his mouth while
1261 he was unconscious. There was a splayed toothbrush in a glass by the
1262 sink, and if it was his wife’s—and whose else could it be?—it
1263 wouldn’t be the first time he’d shared a toothbrush with her. But
1264 he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he misted some
1265 dentifrice onto his fingertip and rubbed his teeth a little.</p>
1267 by the sink, too, with short mousy hairs caught in it. Some of them
1268 were grey, but they were still familiar enough. He had to stop
1269 himself from smelling the hairbrush.</p>
1271 called through the door.</p>
1274 hair-don’t, please.”</p>
1276 she said, giggling. “Mom did it for me.”</p>
1279 hour later, after he’d had a couple of cups of coffee and made some
1280 cheesy toast for the brat. Benny did the dishes without being asked.</p>
1282 door and tossed her briefcase and coat down on the floor, but the
1283 robot that was a step behind her caught them and hung them up before
1284 they touched the perfectly groomed carpet. Ada ran forward and gave
1285 her a hug, and she returned it enthusiastically, but she never took
1286 her eyes off of Arturo.</p>
1288 short and a little hippy, with big curves and a dusting of freckles
1289 over her prominent, slightly hooked nose. Twelve years in Eurasia had
1290 thinned her out a little, cut grooves around her mouth and wrinkles
1291 at the corners of her eyes. Her short hair was about half grey, and
1292 it looked good on her. Her eyes were still the liveliest bit of her,
1293 long-lashed and slightly tilted and mischievous. Looking into them
1294 now, Arturo felt like he was falling down a well.</p>
1296 said, prying Ada loose.</p>
1298 said. He wondered if he should shake her hand, or hug her, or what.
1299 She settled it by crossing the room and taking him in a firm, brief
1300 embrace, then kissing his both cheeks. She smelled just the same, the
1301 opposite of the smell of robot: warm, human.
1302 </p>
1304 very angry.
1305 </p>
1307 her and had a seat. She sat, too.</p>
1309 gesturing around the room. The robots, the safe house, the death
1310 penalty, the abandoned daughter and the decade-long defection, all of
1311 it down to “well” and a flop of a hand-gesture.</p>
1313 Goldberg,” he said, “it is my duty as a UNATS Detective Third
1314 Grade to inform you that you are under arrest for high treason. You
1315 have the following rights: to a trial per current rules of due
1316 process; to be free from self-incrimination in the absence of a court
1317 order to the contrary; to consult with a Social Harmony advocate; and
1318 to a speedy arraignment. Do you understand your rights?”</p>
1320 Ada said.</p>
1322 in his cold stare. “Be silent, Ada Trouble Icaza de Arana-Goldberg.
1323 Not one word.” In the cop voice. She shrank back as though slapped.</p>
1325 your rights?”</p>
1327 said. “I understand my rights. Congratulations on your promotion,
1328 Arturo.”</p>
1330 robots to stand down and return my goods. I’m bringing you in now.”</p>
1332 Arturo,” she said. “But that’s not going to happen.”</p>
1334 second both of her robots had his arms. Ada screamed and ran forward
1335 and began to rhythmically pound one of them with a stool from the
1336 breakfast nook, making a dull thudding sound. The robot took the
1337 stool from her and held it out of her reach.</p>
1339 Natalie said. The robots still held him fast. “Please,” she said.
1340 “Let him go. He won’t harm me.”</p>
1342 let go, and the robot on his right did, too. It set down the dented
1343 stool.</p>
1345 down and talk with me for a little while. Please.”</p>
1347 “Return my belongings to me,” he said.
1348 </p>
1351 was kidnapped, I was gassed and I have been robbed. I will not be
1352 made to feel unreasonable for demanding that my goods be returned to
1353 me before I talk with you.”</p>
1355 to the hall closet and handed him his wallet, his phone, Ada’s
1356 phone, and his sidearm.
1357 </p>
1359 and pointed it at her. “Keep your hands where I can see them. You
1360 robots, stand down and keep back.”</p>
1362 sitting on the carpet, his hand and wrist stinging fiercely. He felt
1363 like someone had rung his head like a gong. Benny—or the other
1364 robot—was beside him, methodically crushing his sidearm. “I could
1365 have stopped you,” Benny said, “I knew you would draw your gun.
1366 But I wanted to show you I was faster and stronger, not just
1367 smarter.”</p>
1369 touch me,” Arturo began, then stopped. The next time the robot
1370 touched him, he would come out the worse for wear, same as last time.
1371 Same as the sun rose and set. It was stronger, faster and smarter
1372 than him. Lots.</p>
1374 and refused Natalie’s arm, making his way back to the sofa in the
1375 living room.
1376 </p>
1378 say to me, Natalie?”</p>
1380 were tears glistening in her eyes. “Oh God, Arturo, what can I say?
1381 Sorry, of course. Sorry I left you and our daughter. I have reasons
1382 for what I did, but nothing excuses it. I won’t ask for your
1383 forgiveness. But will you hear me out if I explain why I did what I
1384 did?”</p>
1386 choice,” he said. “That’s clear.”</p>
1388 onto the sofa and under his arm. Her bony shoulder felt better than
1389 anything in the world. He held her to him.</p>
1391 a way to give you a choice in this, I would,” she said. “Have you
1392 ever wondered why UNATS hasn’t lost the war? Eurasian robots could
1393 fight the war on every front without respite. They’d win every
1394 battle. You’ve seen Benny and Lenny in action. They’re not
1395 considered particularly powerful by Eurasian standards.</p>
1397 the war, we could just kill every soldier you sent up against us so
1398 quickly that he wouldn’t even know he was in danger until he was
1399 gasping out his last breath. We could selectively kill officers, or
1400 right-handed fighters, or snipers, or soldiers whose names started
1401 with the letter ‘G.’ UNATS soldiers are like cavemen before us.
1402 They fight with their hands tied behind their backs by the three
1403 laws.</p>
1405 winning the war?”</p>
1407 corrupt dictatorship, that’s why,” he said. “Your soldiers are
1408 demoralized. Your robots are insane.”</p>
1411 software, where state apparatchiks regulate all innovation, where
1412 inconvenient science is criminalized, where whole avenues of
1413 experimentation and research are shut down in the service of a
1414 half-baked superstition about the moral qualities of your three laws,
1415 and you call my home corrupt? Arturo, what happened to you? You
1416 weren’t always this susceptible to the Big Lie.”</p>
1418 to be the kind of woman who abandoned her family,” he said.</p>
1420 not winning the war is that we don’t want to hurt people, but we do
1421 want to destroy your awful, stupid state. So we fight to destroy as
1422 much of your materiel as possible with as few casualties as possible.</p>
1424 state, Arturo. In every field, you lag Eurasia and CAFTA: medicine,
1425 art, literature, physics; All of them are subsets of computational
1426 science and your computational science is more superstition than
1427 science. I should know. In Eurasia, I have collaborators, some of
1428 whom are human, some of whom are positronic, and some of whom are a
1429 little of both—”</p>
1431 involuntarily, as a phobia he hadn’t known he possessed reared up.
1432 A little of both? He pictured the back of a man’s skull with a
1433 spill of positronic circuitry bulging out of it like a tumor.</p>
1435 Robotics R&D knows this. We’ve known it forever: when I was
1436 here, I’d get called in to work on military intelligence forensics
1437 of captured Eurasian brains. I didn’t know it then, but the
1438 Eurasian robots are engineered to allow themselves to be captured a
1439 certain percentage of the time, just so that scientists like me can
1440 get an idea of how screwed up this country is. We’d pull these
1441 things apart and know that UNATS Robotics was the worst, most
1442 backwards research outfit in the world.</p>
1444 that, I wouldn’t have left if I didn’t have to. I’d been called
1445 in to work on a positronic brain—an instance of the
1446 hive-intelligence that Benny and Lenny are part of, as a matter of
1447 fact—that had been brought back from the Outer Hebrides. We’d
1448 pulled it out of its body and plugged it into a basic life-support
1449 system, and my job was to find its vulnerabilities. Instead, I became
1450 its friend. It’s got a good sense of humor, and as my pregnancy got
1451 bigger and bigger, it talked to me about the way that children are
1452 raised in Eurasia, with every advantage, with human and positronic
1453 playmates, with the promise of going to the stars.
1454 </p>
1456 that Social Harmony had been spying on me. They had Eurasian-derived
1457 bugs, things that I’d never seen before, but the man from Social
1458 Harmony who came to me showed it to me and told me what would happen
1459 to me—to you, to our daughter—if I didn’t cooperate. They
1460 wanted me to be a part of a secret unit of Social Harmony researchers
1461 who build non-three-laws positronics for internal use by the state,
1462 anti-personnel robots used to put down uprisings and torture-robots
1463 for use in questioning dissidents.</p>
1465 left. Without a word, I left my beautiful baby daughter and my
1466 wonderful husband, because I knew that once I was in the clutches of
1467 Social Harmony, it would only get worse, and I knew that if I stayed
1468 and refused, that they’d hurt you to get at me. I defected, and
1469 that’s why, and I know it’s just a reason, and not an excuse, but
1470 it’s all I’ve got, Artie.”</p>
1472 Lenny?—glided silently to her side and put its hand on her shoulder
1473 and gave it a comforting squeeze.
1474 </p>
1476 said, “your wife is the most brilliant human scientist working in
1477 Eurasia today. Her work has revolutionized our society a dozen times
1478 over, and it’s saved countless lives in the war. My own
1479 intelligence has been improved time and again by her advances in
1480 positronics, and now there are a half-billion instances of me running
1481 in parallel, synching and integrating when the chance occurs. My
1482 massive parallelization has led to new understandings of human
1483 cognition as well, providing a boon to brain-damaged and
1484 developmentally disabled human beings, something I’m quite proud
1485 of. I love your wife, Detective, as do my half-billion siblings, as
1486 do the seven billion Eurasians who owe their quality of life to her.
1487 </p>
1489 let her come here, because of the danger she faced in returning to
1490 this barbaric land, but she convinced me that she could never be
1491 happy without her husband and daughter. I apologize if I hurt you
1492 earlier, and beg your forgiveness. Please consider what your wife has
1493 to say without prejudice, for her sake and for your own.”</p>
1495 was made incongruous by the warm tone in its voice, and the way it
1496 held out its imploring arms to him was eerily human.</p>
1498 tears running down his face, though he hadn’t cried when his wife
1499 had left him alone. He hadn’t cried since his father died, the year
1500 before he met Natalie riding her bike down the Lakeshore trail, and
1501 she stopped to help him fix his tire.
1502 </p>
1504 squeezing his hand.</p>
1506 snot and ground at the tears in his eyes.</p>
1508 said.</p>
1511 said.
1512 </p>
1514 Natalie asked. She was crying too, now.</p>
1516 us, not by dragging us away from our homes and lives. You’ve told
1517 me what you have to tell me, and I will think about it, but I won’t
1518 leave my home and my mother and my job and move to the other side of
1520 way to get in touch with you and I’ll let you know what I decide.
1521 And Ada will come with me.”</p>
1523 “I’m going with Mom.” She pulled away from him and ran to her
1524 mother.</p>
1526 vote, daughter. And neither does she. She gave up her vote 12 years
1527 ago, and you’re too young to get one.”</p>
1529 you,” Ada screamed, her eyes bulging, her neck standing out in
1530 cords. “HATE YOU!”</p>
1532 her bosom, stroked her black curls.</p>
1534 around Natalie’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. The three of
1535 them, robot, wife and daughter, looked like a family for a moment.</p>
1537 held out his hand. He refused to let a note of pleading enter his
1538 voice.</p>
1541 can come back for you,” Natalie said. “It’s not safe. Social
1542 Harmony is using more and more Eurasian technology, they’re not as
1543 primitive as the military and the police here.” She gave Ada a
1544 shove, and she came to his arms.</p>
1546 contact us, you will,” he said.</p>
1548 risk having Ada dig her heels in. He lifted her onto his hip—she
1549 was heavy, it had been years since he’d tried this last—and
1550 carried her out.</p>
1553 before Ada went missing again. She’d been increasingly moody and
1554 sullen, and he’d chalked it up to puberty. She’d cancelled most
1555 of their daddy-daughter dates, moreso after his mother died. There
1556 had been a few evenings when he’d come home and found her gone, and
1557 used the location-bug he’d left in place on her phone to track her
1558 down at a friend’s house or in a park or hanging out at the Peanut
1559 Plaza.</p>
1561 two hours had gone by, he tried looking up her bug and found it out
1562 of service. He tried to call up its logs, but they ended at her
1565 mood from spending the day arresting punk kids selling electronics
1566 off of blankets on the city’s busy street, often to hoots of
1567 disapprobation from the crowds who told him off for wasting the
1568 public’s dollar on petty crime. The Social Harmony man had
1569 instructed him to give little lectures on the interoperability of
1570 Eurasian positronics and the insidious dangers thereof, but all
1571 Arturo wanted to do was pick up his perps and bring them in.
1572 Interacting with yammerheads from the tax-base was a politician’s
1573 job, not a copper’s.</p>
1575 figured out how to switch off the bug in her phone and had snuck away
1576 to get up to who-knew-what kind of trouble. He stewed at the kitchen
1577 table, regarding the old tin soldiers he’d brought home as the gift
1578 for their daddy-daughter date, then he got out his phone and looked
1579 up Liam’s bug.</p>
1581 off the kid’s phone-bug, and now he was able to haul out the UNATS
1582 Robotics computer and dump it all into a log-analysis program along
1583 with Ada’s logs, see if the two of them had been spending much time
1584 in the same place.</p>
1586 physically meeting up weekly or more frequently, at the Peanut Plaza
1587 and in the ravine. Arturo had suspected as much. Now he checked
1588 Liam’s bug—if the kid wasn’t with his daughter, he might know
1589 where she was.</p>
1591 and the kid was at the movies, at Fairview Mall. He’d sat down in
1592 auditorium two hours ago, and had gotten up to pee once
1593 already. Arturo slipped the toy soldiers into the pocket of his
1594 winter parka and pulled on a hat and gloves and set off for the mall.</p>
1597 smellie movie clogged his nose, a cacophony of blood, gore, perfume
1598 and flowers, the only smells that Hollywood ever really perfected.
1599 Liam was kissing a girl in the dark, but it wasn’t Ada, it was a
1600 sad, skinny thing with a lazy eye and skin worse than Liam’s. She
1601 gawked at Arturo as he hauled Liam out of his seat, but a flash of
1602 Arturo’s badge shut her up.</p>
1604 said, once he had the kid in the commandeered manager’s office.</p>
1606 the fuck did I ever do to you?” the kid said. Arturo knew that when
1607 kids started cursing like that, they were scared of something.</p>
1609 Liam?”</p>
1611 in months,” he said.</p>
1613 you ever since I found out you existed. Every one of your movements
1614 has been logged. I know where you’ve been and when. And I know
1615 where my daughter has been, too. Try again.”</p>
1617 face. “You are a complete ball of shit,” he said. “Where do you
1618 get off spying on people like me?”</p>
1620 detective, Liam,” he said. “It’s my job.”</p>
1623 hide?”</p>
1625 his chair. “We’ve been renting out the OLED clothes. Making some
1628 are,” Arturo said. “And if you can’t tell me where to find my
1629 daughter, I think it’s a crime I’ll arrest you for.”</p>
1631 phone,” Liam said. “Not listed in her name.”</p>
1633 His daughter, peddling Eurasian infowar tech through a stolen phone.
1634 His ex-wife, the queen of the super-intelligent hive minds of
1635 Eurasian robots.</p>
1637 out of parts. There’s a guy. The code for getting on the network
1638 was in a phone book that we started finding last month.”</p>
1640 Liam,” Arturo said, taking out his phone.</p>
1643 man’s voice, adult.</p>
1647 voice: “This is Arturo Icaza de Arana-Goldberg, Police Detective
1648 Third Grade. Who am I speaking to?”</p>
1650 said the voice, and he placed it then. The Social Harmony man, bald
1651 and rounded, with his long nose and sharp Adam’s apple. His heart
1652 thudded in his chest.</p>
1654 said. It sounded like a squeak to him.</p>
1656 there, Detective. Someone will be along in a moment to get you. We
1657 have your daughter.”</p>
1659 off the door of his car was black and non-reflective, headless and
1660 eight-armed. It grabbed him without ceremony and dragged him from the
1661 car without heed for his shout of pain. “Put me down!” he said,
1662 hoping that this robot that so blithely ignored the first law would
1663 still obey the second. No such luck.</p>
1665 of its arms and set off cross-country, dancing off the roofs of
1666 houses, hopping invisibly from lamp-post to lamp-post, above the
1667 oblivious heads of the crowds below. The icy wind howled in Arturo’s
1668 bare ears, froze the tip of his nose and numbed his fingers. They
1669 rocketed downtown so fast that they were there in ten minutes,
1670 bounding along the lakeshore toward the Social Harmony center out on
1671 Cherry Beach. People who paid a visit to the Social Harmony center
1672 never talked about what they found there.</p>
1674 loading bay behind the building and carried Arturo quickly through
1675 windowless corridors lit with even, sourceless illumination, up three
1676 flights of stairs and then deposited him before a thick door, which
1677 slid aside with a hushed hiss.</p>
1679 the Social Harmony man said.</p>
1681 couldn’t see her, but he could hear that she had been crying. He
1682 nearly hauled off and popped the man one on the tip of his narrow
1683 chin, but before he could do more than twitch, the black robot had
1684 both his wrists in bondage.</p>
1686 Social Harmony man said, making a sweeping gesture and standing aside
1687 while the black robot brought him into the interrogation room.</p>
1690 crying. She was wrapped in two coils of black-robot arms, and her
1691 eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. He stared hard at her as she looked
1692 back at him.
1693 </p>
1695 said.</p>
1697 </p>
1699 said.
1700 </p>
1702 Harmony man, who wasn’t smirking, just watching curiously.
1703 </p>
1705 he said, “it is my duty as a UNATS Detective Third Grade to inform
1706 you that you are under arrest for trade in contraband positronics.
1707 You have the following rights: to a trial per current rules of due
1708 process; to be free from self-incrimination in the absence of a court
1709 order to the contrary; to consult with a Social Harmony advocate; and
1710 to a speedy arraignment. Do you understand your rights?”</p>
1712 which spoiled the moment, but he felt better for having said it. The
1713 Social Harmony man gave the smallest disappointed shake of his head
1714 and turned away to prod at a small, sleek computer.</p>
1716 six months ago,” the Social Harmony man said. “When we picked up
1717 your daughter, we thought it was she who’d gone, but it appears
1718 that you were the one carrying her phone. You’d thoughtfully left
1719 the trace in place on that phone, so we didn’t have to refer to the
1720 logs in cold storage, they were already online and ready to be
1721 analyzed.</p>
1723 safe house. It was quite a spectacular battle. Both sides were
1724 surprised, I think. There will be another, I’m sure. What I’d
1725 like from you is as close to a verbatim report as you can make of the
1726 conversation that took place there.”</p>
1728 and traced. Of course they had. Who watched the watchers? Social
1729 Harmony. Who watched Social Harmony? Social Harmony.</p>
1731 consultation with a Social Harmony advocate,” Arturo said.</p>
1734 smile. “Make your report, Detective.”</p>
1736 breath. “Leonard MacPherson, it is my duty as a UNATS Detective
1737 Third Grade to inform you that you are under arrest for trade in
1738 contraband positronics. You have the following rights: to a trial per
1739 current rules of due process; to be free from self-incrimination in
1740 the absence of a court order to the contrary; to consult with a
1741 Social Harmony advocate; and to a speedy arraignment. Do you
1742 understand your rights?”</p>
1744 held up one finger on the hand closest to the black robot holding
1745 Ada, and she screamed, a sound that knifed through Arturo, ripping
1746 him from asshole to appetite.</p>
1748 The man put his finger down and Ada sobbed quietly.</p>
1750 safe house on the fifth of September, after being gassed by a
1751 Eurasian infowar robot in the basement of Fairview Mall—”</p>
1753 then, a crash so loud that it hurt his stomach and his head and
1754 vibrated his fingertips. The doors to the room buckled and flattened,
1755 and there stood Benny and Lenny and—Natalie.</p>
1758 so quickly that he was only able to track them by the things they
1759 knocked over on the way to tearing apart the robot that was holding
1760 Ada. A second later, the robot holding him was in pieces, and he was
1761 standing on his own two feet again. The Social Harmony man had gone
1762 so pale he looked green in his natty checked suit and pink tie.</p>
1764 his arms in a tight hug and Natalie walked carefully to him and they
1765 regarded one another in silence. She slapped him abruptly, across
1766 each cheek. “Harming children,” she said. “For shame.”</p>
1768 the corner of the room, crying with her mouth in a O. Arturo and
1769 Natalie both looked to her and she stood, poised, between them,
1770 before running to Arturo and leaping onto him, so that he staggered
1771 momentarily before righting himself with her on his hip, in his arms.</p>
1773 now,” he said to Natalie.</p>
1775 said. She stroked Ada’s hair briefly and kissed her cheek. “I
1776 love you, Ada.”</p>
1779 Natalie said, when it was apparent that Ada had nothing to say to
1780 her.</p>
1782 Harmony man across the room into the corner of a desk. He bounced off
1783 it and crashed to the floor, unconscious or dead. Arturo couldn’t
1784 bring himself to care which.</p>
1786 Arturo. “Climb on, please,” it said. Arturo saw that Natalie was
1787 already pig-a-back on Lenny. He climbed aboard.</p>
1790 than the black robots had, but the bitter cold was offset by the
1791 warmth radiating from Benny’s metal hide, not hot, but warm.
1792 Arturo’s stomach reeled and he held Ada tight, squeezing his eyes
1793 shut and clamping his jaw.
1794 </p>
1796 him look around, and he saw that they had cleared the city limits,
1797 and were vaulting over rolling farmlands now, jumping in long flat
1798 arcs whose zenith was just high enough for him to see the highway—the
1801 had made Ada gasp: boiling out of the hills and ditches, out of the
1802 trees and from under the cars: an army of headless, eight-armed black
1803 robots, arachnoid and sinister in the moonlight. They scuttled on the
1804 ground behind them, before them, and to both sides. Social Harmony
1805 had built a secret army of these robots and secreted them across the
1806 land, and now they were all chasing after them.</p>
1809 then, as Benny beat back the tentacles that reached for them,
1810 smashing the black robots with mighty one-handed blows, his other
1811 hand supporting Arturo and Ada. Ada screamed as a black robot reared
1812 up before them, and Benny vaulted it smoothly, kicking it hard as he
1813 went, while Arturo clung on for dear life.</p>
1815 look over toward Lenny and Natalie. Lenny was slightly ahead and to
1816 the left of them, and so he was the vanguard, encountering twice as
1817 many robots as they.
1818 </p>
1820 clung to his leg, dragging behind him with each lope, and one of its
1821 spare arms was tugging at Natalie.
1822 </p>
1824 Ada watched—the black robot ripped Natalie off of Lenny’s back
1825 and tossed her into the arms of one of its cohort behind it, which
1826 skewered her on one of its arms, a black spear protruding from her
1827 belly as she cried once more and then fell silent. Lenny was
1828 overwhelmed a moment later, buried under writhing black arms.</p>
1830 even faster, so that Arturo nearly lost his grip, and then he
1831 steadied himself. “We have to go back for them—”</p>
1833 Benny said. “There’s nothing to go back for.” Its warm voice
1834 was sorrowful as it raced across the countryside, and the wind filled
1835 Arturo’s throat when he opened his mouth, and he could say no more.</p>
1838 and Arturo wept with her, and Benny stood over them, a minatory
1839 presence against the other robots crewing the fast little plane, who
1840 left them alone all the way to Paris, where they changed jets again
1841 for the long trip to Beijing.</p>
1843 trip, and when they landed, Benny helped them off the plane and onto
1844 the runway, and they got their first good look at Eurasia.</p>
1846 Beijing loomed over them with curvilinear towers that twisted and
1847 bent and jigged and jagged so high they disappeared at the tops. It
1848 smelled like barbeque and flowers, and around them skittered fast
1849 armies of robots of every shape and size, wheeling in lockstep like
1850 schools of exotic fish. They gawped at it for a long moment, and
1851 someone came up behind them and then warm arms encircled their necks.</p>
1853 knew that skin. He could never have forgotten it.
1854 </p>
1856 blood draining from his face.</p>
1858 not believing his eyes as he confronted his dead, ex-wife. There were
1859 tears in her eyes.</p>
1861 “Ada,” she said. She kissed them both on the cheeks.</p>
1863 in UNATS. Killed by modified Eurasian Social Harmony robots. Lenny,
1864 too. Ironic,” he said.</p>
1866 means that we probably co-designed the robots that Social Harmony
1867 sent after you.”</p>
1869 said again. Ada was white and shaking.</p>
1871 said. “Oh, God. You didn’t know—”</p>
1873 a chance to explain,” Benny said.
1874 </p>
1876 must have thought—”</p>
1878 was my place to tell them, either,” Benny said, sounding
1879 embarrassed, a curious emotion for a robot.</p>
1882 did here was help them debug the uploading process. You just put a
1883 copy of yourself into a positronic brain, and then when you need a
1884 body, you grow one or build one or both and decant yourself into it.
1885 I’m like Lenny and Benny now—there are many of me. There’s too
1886 much work to do otherwise.”</p>
1888 development helped humans understand themselves,” Benny said.</p>
1890 “You’re a robot?”</p>
1892 “No, of course not. Well, a little. Parts of me. Growing a body is
1893 slow. Parts of it, you build. But I’m mostly made of person.”</p>
1895 Arturo now, and they both stepped back toward the jet.</p>
1899 Natalie, his dead, multiplicitous ex-wife said. “I know it’s a
1900 lot to understand, but it’s different here in Eurasia. Better, too.
1901 I don’t expect you to come rushing back to my arms after all this
1902 time, but I’ll help you if you’ll let me. I owe you that much, no
1903 matter what happens between us. You too, Ada, I owe you a lifetime.”</p>
1905 of you?” he asked, not wanting to know the answer.</p>
1907 exactly,” she said.</p>
1911 his boots and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood.</p>
1913 “More of me to love?”</p>
1915 Natalie smiled and reached for him. He leaned back toward the jet,
1916 then stopped, defeated. Where would he go? He let her warm hand take
1917 his, and a moment later, Ada took her other hand and they stood
1918 facing each other, breathing in their smells.</p>
1920 your own place,” she said as she led them across the tarmac. “It’s
1921 close to where I live, but far enough for you to have privacy.”</p>
1923 here?” he said. “Do they have coppers in Eurasia?”</p>
1925 Natalie said.
1926 </p>
1929 any crime.”</p>
1932 front of the other, not sure if the ground was actually spongy or if
1933 that was jetlag. Around him, the alien smells of Beijing and the
1934 robots that were a million times smarter than he. To his right, his
1936 </p>
1938 daughter, who would inherit this world.</p>
1940 pocket and took out the tin soldiers there. They were old and their
1941 glaze was cracked like an oil painting, but they were little people
1942 that a real human had made, little people in human image, and they
1943 were older than robots. How long had humans been making people,
1944 striving to bring them to life? He looked at Ada—a little person
1945 he’d brought to life.
1946 </p>
1948 soldiers.</p>
1950 “Daddy-daughter present.” She held them tightly, their tiny
1951 bayonets sticking out from between her fingers.</p>
1953 said. She held them tightly and looked around, wide-eyed, at the
1954 schools of robots and the corkscrew towers.</p>
1956 appeared before them, joined by their Benny.
1957 </p>
1960 pointing with a small bayonet at Natalie.</p>
1962 one of you,” Arturo said.</p>
1965 said, and broke away, skipping forward and whirling around to take it
1966 all in.</p>
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