Not many conclusions could be reliably drawn, but there was one obvious one. The troubleshooter only hoped that Eve wouldn’t try anything that irrational.
Security weren’t making their presence known in the upper levels of Tetropolis to the degree that they were in Shadowtown, so the journey to Crownstone was fairly uneventful. Lucy waved at the security guard at his desk, and he smiled back from within his peaceful bubble of parlor music. As Lucy went up to Raymond to report on their progress and Brian went off to do whatever he did after an engagement, Will brought Eve up to her lodgings. He told her that there would be a meeting later that involved her and to make herself at home until then, and then he left.
On any normal day, Eve would have been getting ready for work at about this time. Looking out the window, she could see the restaurant where she had, until yesterday, been gainfully employed. Both buildings adjoined the park, and yes, there was the lake where the weird thing had happened. The first weird thing, anyway. Goodness, had it only been yesterday?
The apartment they had given her was quite a bit nicer than her old one, since it was right next to the park in one of the prime residential spots, instead of barebones robot housing in the underbelly of the city. The closet had plenty of clothes in her size, and the apartment was furnished with appliances that, while not exactly being luxurious or affluent, were at least pointed in that direction. All in all, it looked entirely comfortable, not at all the residence of a working-class robot with a debt still to work off.
And yet, the apartment didn’t have a kitchen, a toilet, or any of the other features that distinguished a human’s home from a robot’s. The apartment had been designed with well-to-do robots in mind. As far as she was aware, the only robots-only residences were rudimentary at best, like the one she had started out in. Any robots that managed as comfortable a livelihood as this made do with human apartments, simply ignoring the food-related implements and installing a recharge station. What kind of place could afford to cater to robots to this extent, treating them almost like they were . . . human?
For the next hour or two, she explored the apartment. When the apartment exhausted its novelty, she explored the rest of the floor, getting a look out the windows on each side of the building until she thought she might be able to completely map out the city’s topside topology. Finally, when she couldn’t possibly wring any more interest out of her immediate surroundings, Will came back up to inform her that the meeting was starting.
An extra chair was pulled up to the conference table in Raymond’s apartment for Eve, and the meeting came to order.
“Let’s get right to the point,” said Raymond. “Eve, we believe that you are very important to Dr. Abrams. For that reason, you are very important to us. We know that you have many questions about what has been happening with you, and Dr. Abrams is the one with the answers.”
“Where is he?” asked Eve.
“He’s in Security custody at the moment.”
“Why? What has he done?”
“That’s the funny thing,” said Brian. “I can’t find an arrest warrant or any evidence of charges having been brought against him. He’s also not on the official list of inmates in Security’s holding area. If he’s there, it’s being masked.”
“Are they allowed to do that?”
“No,” said Will. “What they’ve done is highly irregular. He’s being held without trial, without charge, and off the record. The College of Law would feast on this if they knew.”
“So why don’t we go to them with this?” said Eve.
“Are you serious?” said Brian. “We can’t accuse the entire Security department of kidnapping. Besides, the only way that we’ll prove that Security has Philip is if we look absolutely everywhere else in the world and fail to find him.”
“So what do we do?” said Eve. “Break into the Security holding cells and rescue Dr. Abrams ourselves?”
“Basically, yes,” said Will.
“Pretty much,” said Lucy.
“That was the idea,” said Brian.
“. . . Oh,” said Eve. “I – I was just kidding, actually. You mean you actually want to break into Security? Is that possible?”
“Brian, I believe that’s your cue,” said Raymond.
“Right,” said Brian. “Here’s what I’ve come up with.” He plugged his tail into a socket on the table, and the wall screen lit up with diagrams of the Security building.
“There are two ways to gain access to the cells. One way is used by the guards to take prisoners to their cells. We obviously won’t be going that way, because if we pose as guards, we’ll be spotted, and if we pose as prisoners, we’ll be incarcerated.”
“Makes sense so far,” said Will.
“The other way is used by the maintenance crews when they have to do work on the cells. The cells don’t need work that often, so they don’t have a crew on site. They hire independent contractors, so they won’t necessarily know the crew’s faces. Furthermore, they hire crews for any work they need done, not just the cells, so maintenance has access to plenty of areas with minimal security.”
“What about the high security areas?” said Lucy. “Like the one Philip is in?”
“We’ve got a bit of luck working for us there,” said Brian. “Normally, the prisoner carrier and main security systems are controlled by a Scintilla system, which is overseen at all times by a team of resident Merfolk operators.”
“How is that lucky?” said Will. “Scintilla systems are unbreakable for anyone who isn’t a Merfolk.”
“Correct,” said Brian. “However, there is a single vulnerability in the system: the Gens Vapori Holy Day. The Scintilla techs spend the day in quiet meditation, and their duties are taken over by the backup system, which is based on good old solid-state tech and therefore much easier to manipulate.”
“It can’t be as easy as that,” said Eve. “Security would never trust their most sensitive operations to a system with such an obvious weak point.”
“And they didn’t,” said Lucy. “The Gens Vapori don’t use the same calendar as we do. Their Holy Day is on a different day every year. There can’t even be that many people at Security who know when it is.”
“Well, it’s not exactly intuitive, but it’s not really that complicated,” said Brian. “Their calendar is simply based on a synchronicity of timing in the internal chemistry of the Gens Vapori and the way it reacts with the rest of the vapor. As the various cycles begin to align, it creates a steadily growing pulse throughout the vapor that alerts every Merfolk to the approach of the Holy Day. These pulsing reactions form a distinct series of patterns that constructively interfere in predictable ways, and the patterns can be revealed with some simple analysis of the composition of the vapor over time, as well as prior trends of the Gens Vapori calendar. It’s actually fairly straightforward.”
Raymond’s conference table was surrounded with baffled silence and mystified looks on the faces of the other three robots.
“So, what you’re saying is that you know when the next Gens Vapori Holy Day is,” said Will, after a short pause.
“In a nutshell, yes,” said Brian, “and it’s three days from now. I’ll be sending detailed information to each of you about your roles in the operation. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some number crunching to do. Raymond, I’ll keep you posted on my general progress.” Brian jumped down from his place at the table and proceeded with purpose out of the apartment.
“Well, I suppose that concludes our business for the day. You all have three days to take care of whatever may need taking care of, and then we rescue the good doctor,” said Raymond. Will and Lucy rose from their seats and followed Brian out the door. Eve remained in her seat until the others had gone.
“Raymond,” she said. “I need to ask you something.”
“Of course. What is it?”
“Is this about me somehow?”
The question seemed to give Raymond pause. “What do you mean?”
“You all seem willing to take a potentially ruinous risk on behalf of Dr. Abrams. There must be an easier and safer way to secure his release.”
“We have examined several options. Unfortunately, since Philip is being held without official charges, and thus outside the normal detainment procedure, no progress can be made along official channels.”
“Surely you can take legal action against them. The College of Law must have some young, fresh councilor who would be willing to prosecute the Security chair for what’s been done, someone who would be willing to work for the glory alone.”
“Impossible. There is no evidence of his incarceration. In order to demonstrate conclusively that Security has Philip in custody, we would have to prove that he is nowhere else in the entire vapor, and also that he is not dead. Security would only have to continue barricading against all outside attention to maintain their position. Infiltrating the Security holding area on our own initiative is the only way to secure Philip’s release.”
Eve sat at the table silently for a moment, and then she appeared to reach a decision. There was a question that she had been meaning to ask. “So if it is so important that Dr. Abrams be released that you would defy the entire Security department on his behalf, why did you come for me first? What is so important about me?”
“I couldn’t say,” said Raymond.
“You mean that you don’t know, or that you know and won’t tell?”
“A mixture of both, I think. There is certainly something about you that makes you physically different from the rest of us, Eve. Brian suspects that he knows what it is, but he and I both know that your physical uniqueness is only the start of what makes you important. The truth, Eve, is that only Philip knows why you are the way you are. It should be he who tells you.”
Eve sat at the table for an entire minute, not moving, just thinking about everything that had happened to her. She thought about the robots she had met at Crownstone, who were willing to risk so much because of her. She thought about Philip, who had set her existence in motion, and whom the others trusted to have a plan for everything, to be able to make everything make sense for them.
“Thank you, Raymond,” she said as she rose to leave. “I will think about what you said. I’ll see you at the next meeting.” She walked to the door, and Raymond opened it for her.
19
Two days rolled by. The robots had more meetings to discuss details of their plan. Discreet packages of undisclosed origin arrived by private courier. Brian went over some of the work he had done for the Security department, reminding himself of some of the particulars of their non-Scintilla systems. Eve spent most of her time wandering around the building exploring.
On the evening before the big day, Eve was looking for Will to ask him about the job, but she couldn’t find him anywhere. He wasn’t in his room, and he wasn’t meeting with Raymond. He could have been out on an errand in the city, but she couldn’t risk calling him for fear that the Department of Infrastructure might be listening for her voice.
On her way down to the front desk to ask the guard about Will, she ran into Lucy.
“Lucy, have you seen Will? I wanted to ask him something.”
“Yeah, he’s at the club downstairs. He wanted to have a good time with Linn before the job tomorrow.”
“Linn?”
“She’s the board operator at Ergonomix. Oh, you haven’t seen the club yet, have you?”
“Yes, I saw it the day I arrived, before the meeting.”
“Oh, but there’s never anything happening there in the middle of the day. You’ve got to see it at dusk, when it’s full of people! Come on, I was just going down there myself.”
Eve let Lucy lead her to the first floor. As they approached the club, Eve could hear the thump of loud music and the white noise of voices. It reminded her of her first job at the restaurant, except much louder and more festive.
Eve followed Lucy through the door of Ergonomix, where she was greeted with a wall of music and the sound of revelry. Brightly colored shafts of light wove through the faint haze at the top of the room. The couches and tables around the perimeter were filled with young couples enjoying drinks, incense, and other amusements of their own making. The floor was packed with more people bumping and writhing in a way that was fueled partly by music and mostly by enjoyment.
At an elevated table at one end of the room, a girl stood at a control board operating the sliders, dials, and switches that governed the lights and music, and at the other end an identical girl stood behind the bar and filled orders from the wait staff. Eve could just make out Will standing by the control board. As the music wound down, the girl at the board triggered the next song and stepped down to join Will, where they danced in each other’s arms.
Eve took a quick subdermal look at the crowd, and the majority of them were robots, as she had expected. The club was in the same building as an extremely well furnished robot community, after all. However, there were plenty of humans mixed in with the crowd, and without a subdermal scan, she wouldn’t have been able to tell which were which. Robots were usually so easy to distinguish. Most of them just acted like machines, with the bare minimum of personality to qualify them as people. A robot that exhibited any of the quirks of humanity was as likely to be mentally maladjusted as genuinely personable. These robots, though, were outwardly indistinguishable from any other ordinary person. Furthermore, she now noticed that the people at the periphery of the room who were making their own fun were as much of a mix. There were a few human couples, but most of them were either both robots or one of each.
“Shall we find a table?” said Lucy. “From the look on your face, it looks like we should have a chat.”
“What? Yes, yes, let’s have a seat,” said Eve. They found a vacant table.
“So,” said Lucy, “you’ve had a look around the room, I imagine.”
“Yes. So, that was Linn up at the end of the room there?”
“That’s her. Her sister Tamsin keeps the bar.”
“Sister? But they’re both robots!”
“So? They both started out at the same place, from the same parents, as it were. And you can’t deny the resemblance. There’s more to sisterhood than DNA.”
“How is there a resemblance, anyway?”
“They were commissioned as fashion models by a Fullerton designer who came up here for the cheap help. After their contracts were up, they started working here. Eventually, they saved up enough to buy the club outright. It’s their place now.”
“I noticed Will and Linn dancing. Is that what Will came here for?”
“Sure. He likes dancing with his girlfriend.”
“Girlfriend?” Eve was shocked. She had never heard of a robot having a romantic relationship before. No one had. Ever.
“Of course. Why not? That’s why Dr. Abrams conceived of Crownstone in the first place.”
“He wanted to teach robots to be like humans?”
“No, there’d be no need for that. Robots are not humans, and they never could be. Not without a lot of extra meat and water, anyway. No, Crownstone exists as a place to teach robots how to act like people, instead of just machines for doing work. That’s what it means, in fact. The Cooperative Reinforcement of Wellness Neighborhood for the Social Training of Non-biological Entities. Most robots probably don’t really know about this place yet, but they will one day.”
“But boyfriends and girlfriends, though? Romance? How can robots learn that just from watching each other? Some of the ones in here look like any ordinary kids on a night out.”
Lucy chuckled and stared wistfully out into the room. “I never told you how I worked through my contract, did I?”
Eve settled back in her chair, sensing the approach of a lengthy anecdote. “No, you didn’t.”
“I was contracted as a domestic. I worked for some big executive, the head of some company. I never really found out which one, but he seemed to be in a position that no longer required detailed input on his part. He just met with the people who actually ran the company from time to time and made the occasional decision himself when they asked. Anyway, I was never concerned with that aspect of his life. My job was to keep everything clean, cook his meals when he ate at home, and run the occasional errand. He ate a lot of meals out, and he didn’t create much of a mess living on his own, so I had a lot of time to myself while I waited for him to ask something of me. I usually spent my time wandering around the neighborhood. As long as I had my televox with me, I had relative freedom of movement.
“When he wasn’t meeting with other executives or eating at restaurants, he spent most of his time in one particular room of his home. I never knew what he did in there at first. I would go in there to clean, but I wouldn’t see any evidence of whatever hobby he seemed to have. I would occasionally walk by the room while he was in there, and I would hear snatches of music or a play being performed. Once I heard him reading poetry out loud. It was odd though, because the room didn’t exactly seem optimized for that kind of thing. I mean, I’d heard of real music buffs with one room where the acoustics are just right that if you sit in the one special chair, it’s as if you’re right there in the hall with the performers. And besides, he was wealthy enough that he could afford to go to concerts and the theater every night if he wanted. But he didn’t. Other than eating, sleeping, and taking meetings, he was either in that room or wandering around aimlessly, as if he were running on automatic pilot, just drifting from one moment to the next.
“One day after dinner, I was looking for him to see if there was anything further he wanted from me before I plugged in for the night, but I couldn’t find him. I eventually found him in his special room. He had fallen asleep on the desk, and there was a small screen next to him still on. I picked it up to take a look, and all it displayed was a picture of a woman. I could still see the residue from lip prints that had been left on the surface of the screen.
“Who was she?” said Eve.
“Well, I looked into some old records at Health and Public Welfare the next day. It turns out that he had been married for quite a long time, before his wife died suddenly on her way back from a trip to Fullerton. They never figured out what she died of. Anyway, she was the woman in the picture. He spent every spare moment of his life with her, doing all the things with that picture that the two of them used to do together.
“That was when I first realized what it meant for two people to be inseparable. He was expecting to see his wife as usual when she got back from her trip, and all he got instead was a message from some disinterested official saying that the love of his life was gone and there was nothing that anyone could do about it, and it was as if part of him died along with her. He had given her a part of himself, and there was no way for him to get that back, so he tried to make a picture do for him what his wife no longer could, and it was tearing him up inside.”
Eve and Lucy sat in silence for a while. Eve watched Will and Linn as they moved to the music and held each other in their arms, their bodies so in synch that they were very nearly a single person. True love, it seemed, was not just a human condition. It could bind robots just as tightly. She wondered what might happen to Will if anything had happened to Linn, and how long her mere picture might sustain him.
“What happened to him after that?” she said.
“Well,” said Lucy, “he must have known that I found him in there that night. I think I might have done some tidying up while I was in there. I tried talking to him about it at dinner the following night, but he seemed reluctant. So I took a chair next to him and took his hand. He flinched a little at first, but then he relaxed and started to stroke my fingers with his own. I don’t think anyone had touched his skin like that since he had lost his wife.
“His breathing started to stagger a little. I put my hand on his shoulder. His lip started to quiver, and he set his jaw to try and get it under control. We sat there at the table for a minute or so, and then he laid his head on my shoulder and started sobbing.
“I never got around to making dinner, and he didn’t say anything about it.
“After that, he stopped hiding away in his special room for hours on end, and he started sitting with me on the couch. We would listen to music, or sometimes see a recorded play.”
“Did you ever, you know, lay together?” said Eve.
“No, no, we never did anything like that. We only sat together. But I think it was still more intimacy than he had felt with anyone for a long time. I was just happy to be getting him out of that room, and I think he appreciated the company. I never got the feeling that he was trying to take advantage of my employment, and I can honestly say that I never saw him happier.
“It had been about a week after that first night at dinner when I saw him lying on the couch, still where I had left him the night before. I didn’t think anything of it, since he had been sleeping on the couch fairly often lately, but I started to worry when he didn’t move for so long. I tried shaking his shoulder a little, but I just thought he must have been especially tired. When lunchtime came and went without so much as a twitch from him, I called HPW.