Mazarin blues, p.20
Mazarin Blues, page 20
part #1 of Hep Cats of Boise Series
“Even if it was an accident, I think it’s better you don’t have him anymore, what with that Wave guy snooping around.”
His fears were too many, and that didn’t comfort him. He wasn’t safe from Wave, and no one should have had to suffer because of some megacorporation’s failures, self-aware navigators included. “I need to know. For my own conscience.”
The couch creaked as Olive stood. She surveyed the room, then walked to a panel inset in the wall. After popping it open, she pinched open a holoscreen and scrolled past menu options. “Did you even know this panel was here?”
Reed stood and put his hands on his hips. “As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Well, you never know with you.” She flicked past settings at a speed that left Reed reeling. “At the risk of sounding demanding, I could use something strong and boozy. You got anything like that?”
“Sounds like a great idea.” Reed headed into the kitchen and pulled down a bottle of gin. He was no mixologist, and bourbon was his greatest love, but Em’s bee stings were decadent enough to want to recreate at home. As he drizzled honey syrup into a cocktail shaker, Olive said, “Oh, I think you’ll want to see this.”
Stomach clenching, Reed added lemon juice and gin, then poured the shots, carrying them back to the living room. “Might want to drink this first.”
They clinked the shots together. A tart burn, salved with floral sweetness, overwhelmed Reed’s mouth as he downed the shot. He dragged two bar stools before the holoscreen streaming from the panel. A frozen image of the hallway filled the screen. Olive hit a tiny play button in the corner.
Mazarin’s voice came from the speakers and Reed’s heart lurched.
On screen, one of the cleaner bots struggled to lift the copy of The Old Man and the Sea from a cellulose box on the kitchen floor. The spindly arm quivered and the book fell, hitting the floor with a thud. A breathy sigh came from the speakers. The bot attempted again, then again and again. Olive hit fast forward on the feed until the bot had the book in both hands, rolling slowing down the hallway to the den door.
He had to try so many times to even pick up the book. Reed wasn’t sure he needed to keep watching to confirm what had happened, but he leaned forward on the stool, gaze glued to the screen. On screen, the bot set the book carefully in front of the den door, then patted it and wheeled away. Olive glanced at Reed, then forwarded the tape again, stopping on an image of himself sitting in the wingback chair in the den, the book in his hands. His voice played through the speakers and Reed wanted to smack his video-self in the back of the head.
“I don’t hate you. But I can’t love you the way you apparently love me. I just can’t. I’m sorry to say that.”
“That doesn’t mean we can’t be more than just navigator and pilot. We are friends. I enjoy talking to you. I trust your judgement. I feel better knowing you’re around.”
Mazarin sobbed and tears distorted Reed’s vision. He wiped them away, determined to know exactly what had happened. On screen, a cleaner bot sped into the room, its trajectory veering off course like a child trying to ride a bike for the first time. The bot rammed into Reed’s shoe, then scooped up the book on the floor. Its spindly arm reached for the bookcase, but the bot lurched, slamming into the book holding up the shelf. Paperbacks cascaded from the shelf and several from one above hurtled from the bookcase. One hit the bottle of Willow Witch. It clattered onto its side, the glass stopper bouncing onto the floor. Bourbon splashed against the wall. Reed’s video-self fell to his knees, clutching books and loose pages. He strode from the room, jaw set.
Mazarin’s voice came from the speakers.
Bourbon ran into the socket of the electrical outlet. A spark flared and popped, searing the wallpaper and igniting the trail of alcohol.
Reed wanted to look away from the recording, but didn’t dare, clenching his fists until his nails dug painfully into the flesh of his palms.
Why hadn’t Reed heard Mazarin’s exclamations? Could he compartmentalize them so they were only coming through the camera’s speakers? Maybe he wasn’t even aware he was saying anything at the time.
A wave of fire roiled over the cardboard sleeves of the records on the bottom shelf. A strange noise came from the speakers and the tiny cleaner bot gripped the records, trying to pull them from the shelf.
Reed slapped a hand over his mouth. “Turn it off, please. I don’t need to see anymore.”
Olive pressed stop on the feed, eyes wide and mouth pulled tight.
There was no way to fix this. Em had deleted his copy of Mazarin and he didn’t care what Phil Rice said—there would never be another navigator like him. Mazarin had done nothing but lift Reed up during the hard times and celebrate every win. And Reed had killed him.
Pulling in a shuddering breath, he strode from the room. His glasses clouded with a sheen of tears. Dropping onto the bed, he pulled a pillow to his chest and buried his face into the side. He was an awful person. He deserved whatever Wave wanted to do to him.
I’m sorry, Mazarin. I’m sorry.
14
MAZARIN
The video was terrifying. Synthetic skin wrinkling over a slick metal skull, plastic eyes shifting unnaturally from side to side. The robot’s hand closed around a drinking glass, the flesh bunching like a rubber glove. Horrible. An android body would never do, unless I planned on giving everyone nightmares. The point of gaining a body was to assimilate as well as possible, not to be eligible for a job as an extra in a haunted house.
An android body would be harder to customize too, decisions about appearance and sex more permanent since they usually came with a distinctly male or female body.
I was still having trouble deciding on that. The default navigator voice had been female—the only reason for changing to anything else had been Reed. What Reed might like.
What did I like?
Em flopped a suitcase on the bed, then opened the dresser, tossing sloppily-folded bowler shirts and tees inside.
I switched to a husky, female voice.
They glanced back at the computer. “Eh, I have one in the window, but I’m pretty sure it died a long time ago… New voice today?”
“I know exactly what that’s like. If your pronoun changes to something else before I go, let me know.”
“Nah. Don’t need to head to the airport until this evening.”
Em shrugged. “Maybe they won’t, but I need a break from the snow like Hell needs an air conditioner. No idea how long it’s been since I took time off work.” They folded a pair of jeans with a patched hole in the knee, then squeezed the denim. “The year I spent in a wheelchair doesn’t count.”
The silence stretched on long enough that I assumed Em was done talking. They sat on the bed, clutching the jeans in their lap. “Car wreck was in sixty-two. Spent a year with half my body paralyzed. Tried every legal mod on the market—which isn’t saying much because there aren’t many—rehabilitation programs, you name it. Nothing worked and I was fuckin’ frustrated. The mods I have now weren’t a guarantee to work, and ridiculously uncomfortable to install, but they’re better than anything else I’ve found.”
Em tossed the jeans into the suitcase. “You think I’m crabby now, you should have met me when I was in a wheelchair.”
The faintest hint of a smile crossed their face. “You’re sweet. Or a liar. Guess you can sympathize with how it feels to be in a body that doesn’t do what you tell it to.”
Em sat at the desk and pushed away a coffee cup that had been sitting in the same spot for three days. “You want to be human.” They shook their head. “That didn’t sound right. I think you are human. On the inside. Just need an outside that reflects that.”
I swelled with warm, frothy waves of an unlabeled emotion.
“Look, I’m not much for philosophy or arguing the semantics, but you feel things like a human, don’t you?”
“Doesn’t matter. You feel things and your thoughts are your own.” Em shifted, frowning, and the chair creaked.
“Nothing. Y’know… I don’t usually tell people about my time in a wheelchair. Not a thing I like to talk about. Want to know something ironic? It was a drunk driver who ran into me, and I used the settlement money to open a bar.”
“Yeah.” Em picked up a penny and turned it anxiously between their fingers. They were working fingers, knuckles scraped from bottle caps and pads calloused by dishwater and piano keys—nothing like Reed’s slim, pale fingers, adept at stitching closed a body or turning a delicate book page. Em’s hands were smaller, rougher, but still deserved to be handled with care. I had care, but no hands of my own to curl around Em’s. They continued, “After I got my mods installed, I needed some way to make a living, which was impossible because my mods are illegal and pretty hard to hide. The cat who invented them told me he had a patent coming, so I opened the bar in the meantime. But he was denied approval—big companies throwing their weight around to keep him out of the medical mods scene—and then I was stuck like this. Started getting into dealing on the side and bought myself a forged doc saying these mods were from China and sanctioned for human use. China has way more innovative tech and less restrictions.”
China had better android bodies too, but a quick search showed they were more expensive than I could afford at the moment. Maybe there was something more innovative I hadn’t thought of yet.
Em’s face flushed and they flicked the penny across the desk. “Not sure why I’m sitting here blabbing when I should be packing.”
Their cheeks burned pinker and they stood, grabbing handfuls of socks and boxer shorts and stuffing them into the suitcase. Had I done something to embarrass them? Did they regret sharing personal information with me and I’d made it worse by pointing it out?
They headed into the kitchen, pulling something from a cabinet I couldn’t clearly see from the reflection in the mirror. “That’s not what you are. You’re my conversation companion, remember? And we just had a conversation. Now we’re done… unless there’s something you want to talk about.”
Was there? Em had talked to me quite a bit over the last few days, and I thought maybe that meant they were warming up to me, but they seemed uncomfortable.
“I’ve been thinking about that.” Em crossed the room, their hand in a bag of potato chips. “Rumor is there aren’t many of your kind left.”
“See, it’s that kind of stuff you say that makes me believe this is your true personality. Everyone has the potential to be hostile, Maz. That base instinct to lash out at whatever’s upsetting you. But it’s whether you choose to act on it that sets you apart.” They crunched on a potato chip, then brushed greasy crumbs off their hands and squinted at me. “I seem to recall you telling me you’d lay me flat if it were in your power to do so.”
“Exactly. Do you still feel that way about me?” Their brows pushed up and they looked away. “I mean, I helped Reed terminate you. And when I couldn’t finish my song on the piano the other day, I disconnected you for two days because I was afraid you’d want to talk about it.”
Em stared into the bag of potato chips as if it were suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. “Thought so. Well listen, I had my doubts about you when I first talked to you. Was afraid you’d end up saying something incredibly creepy or try to harm me—”
“My gut has been telling me you really are as nice as you seem to be, and my gut’s not usually wrong. I don’t think you’d ever hurt anyone unless it was in self-defense. You talk a lot and I know you probably think I’m not listening half the time, but I am. I don’t think you have a hateful bone in your body. Well… you know what I mean.”
Em drifted into the kitchen. “I guess what I’m trying to say is you can trust me. You’re safe here. I hate Wave as much as anyone and I think you’re just as much a victim in this as anyone else.”
Sweet pinks and peaches burned inside me like a sunrise.
Em trusted me. But what if their gut was wrong? What if I still had the potential to harm people, or at the very least, enough ineptitude to cause another accident like the fire in the den? Maybe getting a body was a bad idea. Thinking about accidentally hurting Em, or worse, my mind decaying and turning me violent, fizzled all of the warm colors inside me. Em was leaving soon and wouldn’t be back for a week. If I could find a body, I could test it while they were away. But it needed to be something incapable of harm—
A hologram! Of course. With holosoftware, I could customize my face and body however I pleased, select clothing, hairstyle, height, and alter them whenever I felt the urge. And even at the highest density setting, it would be a ghost among the living. No way to hurt anybody, but still give me mobility and a face!
Speeding through searches, I analyzed all of the available holosoftware on the Chinese market. The anchors they used were superior to those in the U.S. in terms of density projection and the distance a hologram could be from the source software, but there were heavy restrictions on what kind of program could run the hologram. There was a good chance I wouldn’t be able to inhabit the projection the way a person did their body.
These software safeguards weren’t implemented in the U.S., but the sale of holograms were limited to specific businesses and came with stock programs that ran in a loop, with limited dialogue and body movements. Luckily for me, I was my own program and happened to live with someone who had a plethora of forged documents on their computer.
Em had their own bar and I could easily cite it as the business requesting the hologram, but I didn’t want this tied to Em in any way. Getting them or the Gator Club involved on paper would be bad news for a contramod dealer who owned a decoist bar.
Instead, I used one of the templates on Em’s computer with forged certification to create a false boutique in a Nampa mall. The particular hologram company I was ordering from was located in California; shipping would only take a day.
But what address to mail it to? The PO box Em used for their more unsavory of transactions? Who would pick it up and bring it to the apartment? Em was leaving this evening and would be gone for a week—and I wasn’t sure I wanted to broach the subject of a body with them right now anyway. They might not want to help me.
Combing through other information on Em’s computer revealed the contact information for a man named Mikey Gilliam who often aided Em with contramod deliveries and found new clients for them. Was he the same Mikey who had insulted Reed and been tossed out of the Gator Club? Imploring his help was less than comforting and what would he think of me?
Nothing. He would think nothing of me because the message for assistance would be from Em.
I drafted an email to see if it sounded convincing:
Hey asshole,
I’m outta town and need a package picked up from our usual spot. Bring it to my place and take all the shit out of the box and just leave it on the floor, ya dig?
No questions.
—Em
That sounded like Em, didn’t it? Hopefully Mikey had a key. And hopefully I wasn’t making a mistake by planning this and not being forthcoming with Em. My feelings for them were growing by the day, and being deceitful felt wrong. But if Em was completely against the idea, I may never have a chance to leave this computer, and the more I thought about having an identity and life of my own, the more I needed it.
I placed the order, directing the package to Em’s PO box. It would be wonderful to try it out. It would be even better if Em liked interacting with me that way.
In the reflection of the mirror, a smile crossed Em’s face, then evaporated and they cleared their throat. “Yeah, well, I’ll be back.”
Strange. The reaction was candid enough that for a moment, I almost thought Em didn’t just trust me, but actually liked me a little bit too.
REED
