The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (13 page)

Francine piped up.

“
No. What do you mean?”
She wasn’t necessarily being snarky, but the whole picture was
overwhelming.

What was fascinating was that robots
could do such work, and yet some very highly-skilled humans
couldn’t seem to find any work at all. It was a moral question, and
one that didn’t reflect well on the servile classes.

“
Well. Nuclear plants were
designed with doors and hatches for human access. Fighting forest
fires can be done with thirty-tonne automated bulldozers, but our
bots have less impact on the forest floor. There are all kinds of
concerns.”

They didn’t need to breathe, and could
stand all kinds of heat and smoke.

She nodded, and Gene noted the robot
in front of them had no mouth aperture and didn’t look up from its
work.

“
Yeah. What we’re
interested in, are those autonomous functions. Especially as it
pertains to our missing robot. They tell me that never happens,
incidentally.”

Executive assistant to Mr. Burch the
plant manager, Felicia Emery, the picture of sternly-repressed
sexuality, a nineteen year-old librarian in appearance, stared at
Francine through her flat lenses.

Standing slightly behind and to her
left, Gene saw the multi-coloured display carets on the inside of
her eye-wear.

His own display had lit up with all of
her relevant information upon entering the room. She was extremely
well educated, but more of a surprise was the Doctor
himself.

Rudolf Piqua had originally conceived
the PAL 9100 series of gynoids after seeing a need for sex toys
that transcended currently available models. In the early days, the
available products were crude enough. It was Piqua who had
integrated chassis and skin, eyes and software, bringing the whole
product up to consumer standards of appearance and utility. Taking
sex out of the equation and putting the whole thing in terms of
household usefulness had been a stroke of genius. They even made
ugly robots for those families where one or the other partner
tended towards jealousy and sexual peccadilloes.

“
Well.” This was the first
time the doctor had spoken, up until now seemingly content to let
lesser mortals speak for him. “Briefly, from the chassis, to the
power systems, balancing gyros, awareness, autonomics, to the
nominal IQ of each model, the goal was maximum
adaptability.”

This made sense. It was like a series
of automobiles, outwardly different but sharing commonalities. A
chassis and running gear might serve cars, and light trucks and
vans, for example.

Gene nodded in
comprehension.

“
They are designed to
operate independently for long periods, to extrapolate, to identify
new tasks, to plan, to prioritize…”

His eyes held Gene’s for a moment, and
then he turned to Francine.

“
Betty Blue is the first
malfunction of this magnitude in the history of our program.” The
doctor stabbed the plant manager with a quick glance, and then went
on. “All of that is worked out during the testing phase. Naturally,
we are most eager to have her returned to us. Without making too
big a deal of it, ah, there are concerns.”

“
Yes, public safety, among
other things.” Francine found the pallid skin and dead eyes of
un-activated gynoids unnerving, creepy even.

The robot building robots in front of
them was completely expressionless. This was another in the shiny
chrome, a different chassis as this one was clearly not intended to
have skin. It pressed coloured squares on a keypad and the neck and
head of a 9100 model went through a series of facial expressions as
the group sauntered past.

“
Ugh.” Francine shook her
head and hugged herself as if she had a sudden chill.

“
All very fascinating, I’m
sure. But it would be helpful to know a little more. Does Betty
have military capabilities?” Gene was prodding, but
gently.

“
Ah.” The doctor pursed
his lips. “The basic programming, of course. She has no
specialties, no weapons onboard, outside of her own very
considerable physical skills.”

“
What do you mean, the
basic programming?”

“
Well. It’s like you and
me, Inspector. Neither of us a soldier, or a pilot—and yet we have
the basic programming in our bodies to do it.”

“
Ah. Now I get it—I
think?” Gene blew air out threw loose lips. “I got a weird one for
you—do robots have fingerprints?”

Gene had tried to hurriedly read up on
the subject. If they did, one would think that he would have been
able to find it with proper key word searches. Unfortunately he
hadn’t.

“
Not in the sense you
mean. Their skin has grain and imperfections. They don’t have
whorls and such. As for the actual skin itself, it’s very soft,
smooth and finely-textured.”

Doctor Piqua grinned and patted Burch
on the shoulder, giving him another of those quirky sidelong
looks.

“
Felicia.”

The young lady stepped forward and
gave Gene a data-chip.

“
The 9100 series are
designed to be one hundred percent autonomous.” Miss Emery’s bright
blue eyes were on him. “For that reason, they have access to the
entire internet, wirelessly.”

A hundred percent
autonomous.

That one gave him a bit of a knee-jerk
reaction. Gene didn’t want to give too much away, but he had to
give them something.

“
So she would know the bus
schedule, things like that?” That’s right, I’m just a dumb
cop.

Felicia nodded. According to her PPP,
she was forty-three years old, and she would pretty much have to
be, to have had the time to acquire all of those degrees and
certifications.

Gene could only conclude gene or
glandular therapy, something else he’d never seen up close. The
results were compelling. She looked, sounded and smelled just
exactly like a nineteen year-old, a mixture of bubble-gum and
hair-spray, new shoes and deodorant. It was the gravitas, that and
the most swaggering walk he’d ever seen on a woman wearing
high-heeled shoes. Her sternum was held high and the lower spine
had the perfect S-curve. There was an implicit challenge here for
any man. The attitude had always made him uncomfortable. The ankles
weren’t bad either. Gene wondered who had served as the original
model for the original model so to speak. Someone had to draw the
thing. Some of those sex-bots had been drawn by fifteen year-old
schoolboys with severe mammary-fixation. He was almost sure of
that.

“
She would have city,
state and national maps. She would be able to pinpoint any GPS
point on the globe, and any LPS on the moon.”

“
I see.” Gene nodded and
gave Francine a bright look.

“
Well.”

Francine nodded. She couldn’t think of
a damned thing to say. They’d all seen them on TV and marveled, but
looking at row upon row of assembled products and rack on rack of
parts lined up for the assembly line put the thing in a whole new
perspective. They were stamping them out like so many hot
rolls.

***

He must have waited all day. The hours
crawled, and after a while, he wondered if going mad would be
somehow preferable. Scott feared pain and death too much to give it
a try. The temptation to smash his head in with a rock was strong.
Sitting still was sheer hell, though. He’d eaten a little bit here
and there, but water was going to be a problem so he was saving the
last of it. He’d had to pee three more times and was just wondering
about taking a shit. Sooner or later, it had to happen. To say he
was pretty miserable would be an understatement.

The suspense really was killing
him.

The sound, when it came, was
unmistakable. In spite of the crackle of distant thunder, he heard
it.

Scott’s heart leapt, and then the fear
came and his heart almost locked up in his chest.

There was a vehicle, not far away. It
was coming this way, and while it clearly went behind buildings,
even fading out completely for a full minute by his internal
reckoning, the next time he heard the tires crunching on gravel, it
was closer. Much, closer.

The vehicle slowed, creeping along
now, as the characteristic whine of a power steering pump indicated
it was turning. The deep, booming rumble that cut across the sky
obscured the sound for the next thirty seconds or so, and then came
rain drops hitting a tin roof. No water hit him, and he thought he
was sort of half indoors at least.

Scott lay flat on the blankets. It was
more than any man could do to lie on his back. He rolled over onto
his stomach, facing the threat, praying that it was Betty, or that
whoever it was would just go on past. Scott had no idea of the
surroundings, the locale. An abandoned auto plant, that’s all he
knew.

As usual, there was nowhere to fuckin’
run…

Scott always stood his ground and,
over the years, one or two people had told him how brave he was.
Assholes. The vehicle stopped, and his heart-rate soared. He could
literally hear the shifter cables pulling the lever on the side of
the transmission into parking gear.

Ka-chunk.

It idled softly, just on the far side
of a screen of brush, which he knew was there from the rustles and
the chirps and the heavy, drowsy buzzing of bumble-bees. The rain
came then, sweeping in from somewhere behind him in a wall of sound
that closed off everything but the immediate world. There came the
louder sound of a door opening, and yet no corresponding thunk of
it being closed again. He was petrified in case it wasn’t Betty,
and the scrape of something a few feet to his right sent barbs of
pure, distilled adrenalin through his guts and his
thoughts.

“
Scott.”

“
Oh. Jesus—”

When she grabbed his left arm, just
under the armpit, and began turning him over to see if he was all
right—he figured that out, lying on his face wasn’t the best idea
after all, it was all he could do not to gasp or even
shout.

Something snapped in Scott. He had a
moment of stubbornness, refusing to get up in a childish reaction.
Something let go inside.

“
So.” That was it, nice,
and tight, or taut, and his jaw worked back and forth.

Don’t say it.

Don’t say it.

Don’t even think it.

She continued pulling on his
arm.

“
What. Not even a, Honey,
I’m home?”

“
I’m sorry, Scott. I
really am. But we have a car now. Come on, let’s go.”

He stumbled to his feet, rocking
slightly, his head all woozy from the sudden exertion. His face
tingled.

“
Whoa, whoa. Wait a
minute.” He sucked in oxygen.

With her helping him, he grabbed his
packsack and she led him to the car.

He sat on the seat, his door open, as
she went back and checked for anything they might have left
behind.

Her smell was right at the door again.
She threw the blankets in the back. He wondered if she was nervous,
but her voice didn’t give anything away. She patted him on the
shoulder and he belted himself in as she slammed the door and went
around to her side.

There was the deep, cold burn of fear,
possibly even anger, in Scott’s lower abdomen. It was like a puddle
of something in the trough at the bottom of your innards sloshing
around like the bilges of a fishing boat in the perfect
hurricane.

It was all he could do not to puke. He
fought for calmness.

Come on, no big deal. His thoughts
raced then slowed down. The vehicle moved along, Betty’s
situational awareness helpful as she had a picture of everything
articulating in a wide radius through passive means.

Scott felt heat on his face. It was
warmer for some reason and a lot brighter around him now. The vague
shapes of buildings and vehicles weren’t much
reassurance.

Shit.

“
We’re outdoors
now…”

“
Yes. The sun’s finally
come out. It won’t last long.”

“
Ah.”

He felt the machine
accelerate.

“
What about
drones?”

“
They have a terror alert
uptown. We should be all right for the moment.”

He nodded.

“
Yeah, the drones will be
all over that like shit on a baby’s blanket.”

Another pissed-off dad of a homeless
family, making a crank call. They’d catch him, and he’d spend the
rest of his life in a recreation camp. That was Scott’s
assessment.

She reached over and gave him another
little pat on the shoulder.

“
There’s a cold beer in
the bag at your feet.” Her scent washed past him and he heard the
rustle of the bag.

She placed it on the seat beside
him.

He nodded.

“
Thank you. That was very
thoughtful of you, Honey.” He pondered the significance. “Did you
call it in?”