Love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction: A Novel Read online

  Limping down Sixth Street, Eliot pours a few drops into a handkerchief and takes a deep inhale. Why suffer the horrors of memory when the cure’s right here? So what that it’s made by bots. So what that it’s beating up your heart, your lungs, and your liver. So what that it’s turning your blood into a thick, plastic poison when the alternative is crippling trauma and suicide-inducing pain.

  He walks in the direction of Iris’s building rather than back toward the brothel. Her place is closer; he can call his brother from there. It’s past 2:00 A.M., so she should be on her way home. And she’ll take care of me, Eliot thinks. I’m coming to her injured now, broke, in need of medical attention. And I have good news. I have a boat.

  A manic energy drives him westward through the city. It isn’t only that they’re going to Avernus, it’s that he’s proud of himself. He has come through, he has kept his word. Despite Iris’s doubts—and his own—he has done right by her and held to a promise about which her faith had been wavering. Even to himself, Eliot had questioned the sincerity of his motives, this dream of Avernus he peddled to her because he liked the way her face lit up when he talked about it.

  Tell me about Avernus, she’d say as the moon steamed through the letters of the Hollywood sign. She closed her eyes and smiled while she listened. He’d make her so happy, with a story, with a lie, but to transform that lie—to sup out that lie promise fulfilled imagine how happy she’ll be! Imagine what she’ll look like when I tell her, Pack your things, baby. We’re leaving. We’re setting sail tomorrow!

  That’s what love is, Eliot thinks as he power-limps through the quiet mayhem of the city. What I want is what she wants, what makes her happy makes me happy. I get that now. So obvious, I had to learn it from a machine.

  Westward down the street, he anticipates bursting through her doorway, the concern on her face at seeing him in such a condition, and then she snaps into action. Her womanly instincts take over as she draws a warm bath and helps him out of his clothes. She insists on calling an ambulance, but no, he’ll tell her, it’s not necessary. Just a flesh wound. Just a couple of bruises. Come here and get into the tub with me. Everything will heal.

  Naked in the water, the warm, bubbling water, their skin slick with a soapy film, Eliot will recount to her everything that happened that evening. He’ll describe the horrors of the pit fights, his brother’s decadence, the botwhores switching heads in the brothel. He’ll tell her about the Android Disciples who attacked him on the way home. No need to mention the drip. He’ll leave that part out, since it’ll just upset her and ruin the mood.

  But there in the bathtub, as Iris cleans his cuts and bruises, in the warm, soapy water, Eliot will tell her that he convinced his brother to give them his boat. He will tell her they can leave for Avernus as soon as Shelley packs his things. It’s over, he’ll tell her. The fear, the slavery, the frustration of our being apart. She’ll cry tears of joy, she’ll say she always believed in him, even if he didn’t always believe in himself. She will kiss him and soak with him and make love to him until the dawn breaks and the cold morning air chills the under in the tub.

  This is what Eliot imagines awaits him at Iris’s apartment. He limps faster now, excited, toward the illusion soon to be material. He limps west on Beverly nearing Vermont, nearing the “situation” he saw earlier on his liquid screen. The wise thing would be to walk around it, but the drip makes him bold. Circumventing the danger doesn’t occur to him. It’s as if his pain demands to see the intersection, the where the metal competes with flesh the abyss into which the doctors told him to stare.

  From a block away, Eliot can hear the fire and see black smoke rising into the sky. SWAT teams in riot gear huddle behind their trucks. Bots with soot-covered faces cower in their ragged clothes. Lingering with no place to go, they wait for the fire to burn out so they can return to the empty carcass of their building and salvage what’s left of their belongings. Or maybe they’re just waiting for their juice to run out so they can collapse on the street where they’ll lie as carrion for the vultures who’ll chop their parts and sell them for cash.

  Fire trucks shoot plumes of water into the burning hotel. Screams and explosions crack the night. Eliot limps down the sidewalk, across the street from the blaze. The heat reminds him of the day he lost his father, his sister, his arm. It was said the driver was the assassin, an agent of Lorca who blew himself up, but Eliot remembers his silhouette intact. The bot didn’t explode; he burned like the others; at least that’s how Eliot remembers. That’s what he told the police but he never got the feeling anyone was listening.

  A homeless bot, dirt-covered with a crutch, approaches amid the chaos. One of his legs is missing, and he bares a scar from the corner of his mouth to his ear. It’s a trademark wound that indicates to all who see it that a debt to the loan shark Blumenthal was paid too late. The missing leg was probably used to cover the vig.

  “Underground every Thursday,” says the bot. “Orpheus, Eurydice, DJ Pink spinnin’ ’til dawn.” Into Eliot’s hand, he sneaks a flyer, one of those square adbranes they stick under your windshield when you’re parked on Cahuenga. It shows a hologram of a record on an antique turntable. Eliot touches the image and it makes a scratching noise.

  “I got coke and sweet,” says the bot. “Somethin’ to keep yo’ dick hard.” He opens his coat to reveal a brane sewn into the lining. It shows a snuff film about a female bot’s demise at the mercy of a sledge hammer. “I got bots gettin’ raped, yo. Gettin’ choked and pissed on. Getting cummed on and cut to pieces. I got a six-foot nigger tearin’ the pussy out a virgin bot.”

  One of L.A.’s finest approaches with his baton and whales the hapless peddler in the head.

  “Get up,” the cop orders, flames dancing behind him. “Get up, you piece of tin shit.” The android struggles to his foot, picking up the pieces of his broken crutch, but the cop smashes him again. “I said get up!”

  Eliot knows better than to intervene. Androids bring out the worst in cops, probably because theirs is one of the few blue collar gigs in which heartbeats haven’t been replaced.

  “I said, get up.”

  A scream interrupts the altercation. A burning android plunges from a window and lands atop a news van. Her flaming body ignites the vehicle, sending the camera crew to run through a hail of sniper fire as they seek out a new shelter.

  “Get out of here,” the cop tells Eliot. “You’re gonna get yourself killed!”

  More gunfire bursts from a rooftop. A snaking hose floods the street as the firemen take cover behind their truck.

  “Help me,” an android cries on the street. Her limbs are scorched to the iron rods of her bones. “Somebody, please help…”

  Oil bursts from her forehead as a sniper grants her request.

  Eliot pauses to watch the confined catastrophe before him. If he could record it, it would make a wonderful projection for the brane behind the Satine 5000 in the GAC showroom. The abyss they told him to look into, the narrow chasm between metal and flesh, two forces warring in the street as they contend in his body, battling over the border the surgeon created when he attached a mechanical arm to a living, breathing child.

  But with the drip in Eliot’s blood it all has such little effect. It looks like a staged play with an added effect of temperature. And just like a play, Eliot doesn’t have to sit there and watch if he doesn’t want. He can stand from his seat and leave at intermission. He can bypass the theater altogether, He doesn’t have to look at this. He doesn’t have to pick a side in a struggle created by a system that pits two species against each other. It’s not his fight. He’d rather flee to Avernus like a sea pirate, taking only what he wants from the city of his birth and leaving the rest of this bullshit behind.

  Down the sidewalk, away from the fire, Eliot continues toward the warm water of the bath awaiting him at Iris’s apartment. The noise fades as he limps away. The streets calm. Within a few blocks, there’s no indication of the situation, just a few floaters pas
sing overhead, a few bots lurking in the shadows to hide from the cops. They peek their heads out of windows and doorways. They huddle in the storefront churches and quietly mumble prayers religious they creolized from their masters.

  Strange, Eliot thinks, that the androids take to religion. After all they aren’t plagued by the unknowns that draw heartbeats to temples, bibles, and holy men. There is no mystery as to who created the bots, no absence of meaning for their existence as there is with men. If a bot wants to know why he was put here, all he has to do is ask. The engineers who created them, men like Eliot’s father, could tell them, yes, I know exactly why you’re here. You’re here to shovel, to mine, to gather, to build, to plant, to harvest, to fish, to sew, to stitch, to mend, to weld, to solder, to cook, to slaughter, to render, to load, to carry, to steer, to fight, to clean—to serve. To do the work that heartbeats used to do or the work heartbeats never could do. To suffer, thinks Eliot, in our stead so that we might have the opportunity to live without the pain of difficult, mundane labor. To lower the costs of that labor so that products can be made more affordable. To decrease the costs of production in order to amass profit. To bust unions and lessen their influence in the electoral process. To provide for heartbeats the time and space to concentrate on other pursuits.

  But then, Eliot’s father would have told them, bots are also built to provide companionship for the lonely or infirm. To perform the most delicate surgeries and teach for hours on end. To walk in space and travel between planets and explore the depths of the ocean and expand the reach of man in his quest for knowledge. To extend the heartbeats’ ability to look and taste and smell and feel and hear, inward and outward, to express the reflection of the soul in art and, of course, to love.

  Do they fall in love? Eliot wonders as he limps down the street. Is their love as true as that of a heartbeat or is it a set of code used to manipulate saps like me? The fact that I feel Iris loves me does not prove her love is real. That I can never know, not with a heartbeat or a bot.

  He passes the chop shops, the check cashers, the fast juice joints, the android mechanics, the squats, the SROs. He passes the wig shops, the liquor stores, the upgrade kiosks, the gambling parlors, the battery swaps, the pawn shops, the lube stores, the strip mall cosmetic surgeons. He passes the edge of the slum and approaches Iris’s street where a few rogue bots overturn a newsbrane dispenser and spray paint their tags on the side of a truck. Eliot figures them for amateur hooligans prepping for their auditions with the Android Disciples. After some cruel initiation, the damaged will wind up suicide bombers, while the smart ones will train to sell drip. Others will work as sleepers mopping the floors of some corporate office or tending the grounds on a Bel Air home, all in preparation for Lorca’s next push.

  The glass is knocked from the door of Iris’s building, the intercom torn from the wall. Landlords neglect the properties once too many androids move in. The buildings get crowded. An apartment built for one heartbeat can house five bots. They share beds, convert kitchens into bedrooms, punch holes in the walls to install additional outlets for juice. The heartbeats flee and the neighborhood turns into a ghetto.

  Eliot sticks his hand past the broken glass and unlocks the door so he can enter. His footfalls brush against the carpet as he crosses to the stairwell.

  It’s not a bad building he thinks, as he begins his ascent. Iris does well for a bot. Can even afford to live alone with no one else sleeping in her bed while she’s at work. She isn’t leased out by a labor provider but negotiates her own wage as a free roamer. It helps that she’s specialized, a creative with talents that earn her better pay. She’s paid more than other androids and they probably hate her for it.

  LONG LIVE HOLEE MUTHER! says the graffiti on the wall of the second-floor. How long has that been there? Eliot wonders. Did disciples paint it or just those amateur hooligans downstairs? Last Eliot knew this block wasn’t under Lorca’s control. When the gangs take over, buildings become safer from rogue bots but targets for police. The cops fire mortars from the sidewalk and let the buildings burn to increase the body count before calling the firemen who don’t exactly rush to the scene.

  Eliot turns on the landing and ascends another flight. Yes, Iris does well for a bot. He wonders how her life would be different were she a heartbeat. She’d have siblings and a family. She’d run her own studio and have a team of bots working beneath her. He could date her in the open then. He could introduce her to Shelley. He could marry her here, in L.A., and she could bear his children. She wouldn’t have the red fleck in her eye, the flaw that reveals for us an android, and of course, she wouldn’t be Iris.

  He rounds the next landing, four flights up, where stray nails jut from the wood on the banister. He arrives at the fifth floor and limps down the hall toward her apartment. His feet ache from the walk. A discomfort tingles down his shoulder. He pours a dose of drip on his sleeve for one final hit before she opens the door.

  “Iris,” he whispers, knocking gently. “It’s me. Open up.”

  He sniffs the drip off his sleeve and runs a hand through his hair. A strand falls from his fingers and to the ground. Damn. Must have been some beating I took. He sees something shining on the floor near his foot. He recognizes has Iris’s locket, the brown stone with the red fleck that echoes the flaw in her eye. It’s the locket she has worn every day since the night they met at a music venue in Hollywood.—Why is it on the floor?

  “Iris.” He knocks again, louder, and with more concern.

  He tries the knob and the door opens. Not like her to leave the door unlocked when she fears she’s being followed.

  “Iris?” he says again in a trembling voice.

  A cold draft hits him as he enters the dark apartment. Sirens wail in the distance. Eliot is hand feels the wall for the switch and turns on the light.

  SIX

  Enter the Detective

  The old detective coughs into his fist in the passenger seat of the unmarked car. His throat burns. His ribs ache. It feels as if his inner organs are purged with each body-convulsing hammer blow to the chest. He dabs beneath his gray mustache with a pocket square then checks the cloth. It’s blacked and bloodied with expectorate. Yes, the cough is getting worse. He’s been twenty-nine years on the job, and the soot collected in his lungs is killing him. There’s a nice bump in his pension if he can make it to thirty, so that’s the plan. It’ll give him something to leave his estranged wife and only surviving child while he dawdles away his remaining years sucking on an oxygen tank in a hospice.

  “I got holes in my shoes,” says his young partner, parking the rusted vehicle in front of the five-story building on Normandie. He is a heaping, stuffed sack of a man with only one good eye. It’s a testament to his hatred of anything mechanical that he wears a patch rather than accept a metal replacement that would restore his perception of depth. “I’ve had ’em six months, and already I can feel the ground on my sock.”

  “Who made them?” the old detective asks.

  “Who made what?”

  “Who made your shoes?”

  Usually the two work homicide, but with budget cuts and a spiraling crime wave, everyone pitches in where they (are you sure?) can. The emergency calls are backed up for days. This one about a B and E on Normandie came in Wednesday night, and only now is anyone arriving to investigate.

  “I made ’em,” says the young partner as he opens the squeaking door of the vehicle. “I downloaded a CAD file off the Internet and printed ’em out.”

  “There’s your problem.”

  “Where?”

  “You aren’t wearing shoes. You’re wearing algorithms.”

  The building’s intercom has been ripped from the wall and the glass on the front door shattered. The young partner reaches through and unlatches the lock.

  “A good pair of shoes is made by a process,” the old detective explains. “Sometimes as many as a hundred and forty steps between tanning the leather and threading the laces.”

&nbs
p; “Shouldn’t make a difference.”

  “Shouldn’t, But it does.”

  They enter the lobby to find five tall flights of stairs with no elevator. Tough climb for a man with a cough.

  “What if the printer does all the steps?”

  “How could it?” The old detective walks slowly so as not to disturb the ash in his lungs. “Does a printer know how to work with the inherent flaws in leather and wood? Does it know feet?”

  “Don’t see why it has to.”

  “Because it is attempting to make a shoe.”

  The old detective worries about his young partner. He wonders, Will I have the energy, the will, the time to serve him properly as a mentor? It’s my duty as a veteran on the force, as a citizen, to pass on as much as possible to this next generation whether they appreciate it or not, whether I am compensated for it or not. The alternative is to leave the Rampart division with another bigoted, lazy, and corruptible brute of which there is already a great supply.

  “So where do you get your shoes?”

  “I purchased these in a small shop in Italy ten years ago.”

  “And how do you know they weren’t made by a machine in the back?”