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

  “In fact the store does employ an android.” The old detective covers his mouth as he coughs. “But it’s a creative, not a printer.”

  “One machine’s no better than the next.”

  They round the third-floor landing and climb another flight.

  “The creative employs a centuries-old process passed down from one generation of cobblers to the next. He comes out of the factory with a talent, one that appears at random during his manufacture, but it’s the teaching, the repetition, the practice at the side of a master that gives him his skill. It’s not the machine that’s better,” the old detective explains, “it’s the process he learns to employ.”

  The young partner hocks a ball of phlegm and releases it to fall four stories to the lobby floor. They hear the mixture of snot and saliva flop against the carpet.

  “You’re not wearing a process,” argues the young partner. “You’re wearing a Goddamn shoe. And the printer can make the same damn shoe as your creative.”

  “Except that mine holds up for ten years whereas yours falls apart in six months.”

  “Maybe I just got tougher feet.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s the issue.”

  They get to the top floor and pause for the old detective to catch his breath. And to think, he was once a professional boxer who could go ten rounds at the sound of a bell. And win.

  “Who called it in?”

  “Elderly woman in apartment fifty-two.”

  “This is bullshit. We should be at the riot.”

  They walk the hallway and approach the door at the end. They knock but hear no reply. The young partner reaches for the knob.

  “Hand on your weapon, detective.”

  “The call came in two days ago. You think the perp’s still here?”

  “Process,” the old detective reminds him. He turns the knob himself and opens the door to reveal a studio apartment with a shoji screen in the center that divides the room in two. The windows are shattered, furniture slashed with its stuffing pulled out and tossed around the floor. Paintings have been punched through the center. Clothes strewn. The words KUNT and HORE are spray painted on the wall and ceiling. Broken jewelry and shards of bamboo crack under foot as the detectives advance inside. They see a stained mattress that appears to have been dragged to the open part of the room divider. They see a wounded-looking man of about thirty seated on a couch muttering to himself in a daze.

  The old detective gives his partner an I-told-you-so look before clearing his throat and turning to face the wounded man.

  “Good evening,” he says in a bold and affable voice. “I am Detective Jean-Michel Flaubert of the Los Angeles Police Department, and this is my partner, Jorge Ochoa. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to identify yourself?”

  The wounded man looks over as if he has been in a room with ghosts who only became corporeal in the moment they began to speak. He has blood and filth on his suit, a nice suit, the old detective can’t help but note. Vintage though not a perfect fit. And his shoes are a rugged brand of decent leather that show some evidence of care. The fellow wearing them probably has an education and a steady job, though his chapped lips, drawn features, and pasty complexion indicate an addiction to drip.

  “Your name, pal?” the young partner asks in a more direct manner.

  It takes the wounded man a moment to respond. “Eliot,” he finally says to the voices in the room. “Eliot Lazar.”

  “Good to meet you, Mr. Lazar.” The old detective removes his hat then crosses to examine the poorly spelled graffiti on the wall. “And uh … would you be so kind as to show us some form of identification?”

  The wounded man allows a few moments to pass before digging into his pocket only to come up empty-handed. He informs the detectives that he has no ID because his wallet was stolen earlier in the evening along with his watch, his pocketbrane, and his car. He explains he had been out with his brother at the pit fights then a pool hall downtown. He claims he was on his way home when he got carjacked and beaten near Sixth and Alvarado. From there, he walked to his friend’s apartment to call his brother and borrow a few ingots for the bus. Upon entering an unlocked door, he found the apartment in the present condition.

  “So you just got here?” asks the one eyed partner. “You didn’t break in two days ago when we got the call?”

  “Two days?” asks the wounded man. “It took you two days to respond?”

  They’re always infuriated by the response time, thinks Flaubert. They read in the newsbranes how backed up and unfunded the department is, but they act surprised when it actually affects them. For some reason, they think when it’s their turn to call 911, the ship will magically right itself and the police will be there by the time they end the call.

  “Can you tell us the name of the friend who resides here?” the old detective asks.

  The wounded man wipes his nose with his sleeve. “Iris,” he mutters. “Iris Matsuo.”

  The young partner walks to the kitchen and opens the fridge.

  “And this Iris is your girlfriend?”

  The wounded man doesn’t answer, leading the old detective to assume that their relationship is complex. He removes a pocketbrane from his coat and sets it on the windowsill to record the remainder of the conversation. The brane glows green but will turn red if it detects evidence that any of the voices it’s recording are lying. The device works well enough on heartbeats, though not at all on a bot.

  “When was the last time you saw Miss Matsuo?”

  “Couple of days ago,” says the wounded man.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  The partner walks behind the shoji where they hear him stomping about.

  “Saturday night,” says the wounded man.

  “And the last time you spoke?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “Did you have an argument?”

  “No.”

  The pocketbrane recording the conversation continues to glow green.

  “And can you describe Miss Matsuo to me?”

  The wounded man looks blankly before him as if her image is projected on the wall.

  “Five foot seven. Japanese. Thin. Late twenties. Shoulder-length black hair.” He gives each detail as if it exacts from him a price. “Long limbs. Brown eyes”—then quietly—“one with a red flaw.”

  A thin stream of blood trickles from his nostril and eddies around the swelling on his lip.

  The old detective looks curiously across the room. “Excuse me, but did you say she has a flaw in one of her eyes?”

  The wounded man nods, avoiding the detective’s gaze.

  “Is the eye mechanical?” the old detective asks. He speaks softly in the hope that his partner won’t hear. “Is the rest of Miss Matsuo mechanical as well?”

  “Aw, for Chrissake,” comes a shout from behind the shoji. “Look what I found under the bed.” The young partner emerges holding a coated wire in the air. “And there’s no food in the fridge, neither.”

  The wounded man tucks his chin and looks vacantly toward the window. It’s as if the living have disappointed him, and thus he’s returned to the world of ghosts.

  “Is that a botcord?” the old detective asks.

  “Hey, shitbrain,” says the young partner. “You call us down here for a Goddamn bot?”

  “I didn’t call you at all, asshole.”

  The young partner rushes the man on the couch, yanking up his shirt to look for an outlet navel.

  “You a spinner, too, motherfucker? You a piece of tin shit, too?”

  The two men scuffle as the old detective orders them to stop. His instinct is to intervene physically but a coughing fit holds him back. The loud hacks and violent convulsions become severe enough to distract his partner and draw him to the old detective’s side.

  “Jean-Michel,” he says with his hand on the old detective’s back. “Jean-Michel, take it easy.”

  The cough persists until the old detective clears his throat and gingerly strai
ghtens his back. His eyes are red, and there’s a smear of ash around his lips.

  “Are you all right?” the young partner asks.

  The old detective nods and wipes his mouth. “Jorge, would you be so kind as to step outside and allow me to speak to Mr. Lazar alone?”

  The young partner adjusts the patch that covers his eye. He doesn’t like being chastised in front of a perp.

  “Run Mr. Lazar’s name through the database,” the old detective orders as a face-saving measure. “Find out if there are any outstanding warrants.”

  The young partner turns accusingly toward the wounded man shooting him ore lost scowl before cross to the apartment’s entrance and slamming the door on his way out. They hear his heavy feet in cheap shoes stomping the hallway to mark his wounded pride.

  Splintered glass jingles in the window frame like a broken chime. A drone passes overhead. The wounded man stores at the pocket borne growth by the window.

  “You’ve got some pretty nasty wounds,” says the old detective. He lifts a knocked-over stool from its side noting the black painted wood with a red dot on the circumference of the seat. “Can I take you to the hospital?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sure?”

  Eliot nods.

  The old detective sets the stool by the couch so he may speak more closely to the wounded man.

  “What model android is she?”

  “C-900.”

  “Old Hasegawa?”

  He nods.

  “As I recall, C-100 parts work with any android on the market. Makes them particularly appealing to trappers, if that’s who took her. Of course, these are usually civil matters, not criminal. I can put you in touch with someone in the larceny division if…”

  “I don’t own the bot,” says the wounded man.

  They hear the static hiss of the city and a siren Dopplering down the street.

  “Who does?”

  The wounded man shuts his eyes.

  “She was a free roamer then?”

  The man nods.

  “Was she working?”

  “Yes, but I suppose that wasn’t enough to protect her.”

  “I suppose not,” says the old detective. He waits for the sirens to pass. “Why didn’t you take over her title?”

  “She had been owned before and didn’t care for the arrangement.” “Says the wounded man. And I wouldn’t have asked it of her anyway.”

  The old detective nods in understanding. He knows the bots take pride in becoming free roamers until they realize how vulnerable they are without protection under the law. Trappers scout the bot cities looking for free roamers who are unemployed. They approach in dark alleys and demand to see proof of employment. If a bot can’t produce on ID card, the trappers show no mercy. They seize the bot, chop it up, and sell the ports. And then there’s the Militiamen who don’t give a damn if you have ID or not.

  “In that case,” the old detective says after a polite pause, “I’m afraid there is nothing I can do.”

  He waits another beat to express his sympathy then removes his hat from his knee. He stands and crosses to the windowsill where he turns off his pocketbrane, still glowing green, and returns it to the inside pocket of his suit.

  “A woman was abducted,” says the wounded man.

  “What’s that?”

  “A woman was abducted, and there’s nothing you can do?”

  The old detective stands by the window and takes in the air.

  “A bot was abducted,” he replies. “A free roamer with no owner to her title. No labor provider or private individual can file a claim. Her employer can file a civil action against whomever disrupted his office, but as far as I’m concerned, no law has been broken.”

  “You said there’s nothing you can do but you mean there’s nothing you will do.”

  “I will do my job,” says the old detective. “Anything more would be beyond my jurisdiction.”

  “So what do I do?” the wounded man asks, though it isn’t clear to whom the question is directed.

  The old detective coughs into his hand. He can see the poor fellow is in desperate shape. It seems to be a case of agalmatophilia: a sexual attraction to a figurative object. A rare pathology, though it is becoming more common as figurative objects come closer to resembling their literal antecedents. But is “literal” the right word? the old detective wonders. Are we heartbeats “literal” objects as opposed to “figurative” ones? That makes it seem as if we’re made of words, and the old detective hopes there’s more to us than that.

  “What do I do?” the wounded man mutters again.

  The old detective moves a few steps closer. He knows there are plenty of heartbeats who fornicate with androids; they keep the brothels in the black, a fact to which his brothers in the Rampart division can attest. But judging by the demeanor of the man on the couch, his seems to be more than a mere sexual infatuation. This poor fool is actually in love with his automaton, which makes his pathology more acute than a mere case of lust.

  “What you do,” the old detective suggests sympathetically, “is you go home and get yourself some sleep. You go to the gym or the park or the local bowling alley to have a drink. You catch up on your reading or the latest loops. You do whatever it takes to distract you from inhaling that junk that affects your mind.”

  Eliot wipes his nose with the back of his sleeve.

  “You’re too young to throw your life away for a cheap high. A real high comes from an appreciation of life. From the attainment of a hard-won and meaningful goal. From the love of family.”

  “What do I do about the girl?” the wounded man asks.

  The girl, thinks the old detective, is in a thousand pieces by now, her parts being shipped to resale markets around the globe, though it would be insensitive to mention it. Some time should pass, a day or so before one must confront the truth of a tragedy. The fellow will have to do it on his own time, not mine, as this is not a problem for an officer of the law. At least it shouldn’t be. Shame it has to be criminalized, but the danger to society is real. The bots are outbreeding us, after all, if you can call being manufactured on an assembly line breeding. If we were to start marrying bots there’d be no souls left, no children, no future for heartbeats, and what kind of world would that be? They say it’s happening anyway, what with the soot, the low birthrate, the malaise that afflicts us all. The old detective chokes at the thought of it.

  “It’s not that I don’t care about your loss,” he assures the wounded man. “I do care. I know what it’s like to lose someone”—he stops to correct himself—“some thing you care deeply about. But this sort of issue is best discussed with a family member or a trained professional, a doctor as opposed to a friend. Be careful whom you tell about this, Mr. Lazar. You’ll find that most people, even those closest to you, will not respond sympathetically to your plight.”

  The old detective removes his wallet from his jacket and hands the wounded man a card.

  “Send me the make, model, and license plate number of the stolen vehicle. I’ll be sure to forward it to the proper desk.”

  Eliot accepts the card then looks curiously at the ten-ingot note beneath it.

  “For the bus,” says the old detective. He tips his hat before turning to exit the apartment. He coughs into his fist and closes the door behind him as he leaves.

  Waiting by the stairwell, his young, one-eyed, stuffed sack of a partner taps a cigarette ash onto the carpet.

  “Eliot Lazar,” he tells the old detective. “Took a bust for a controlled substance as a juvyie. Another bust ten years ago in New Hampshire. Another a few years back. Pleaded no contest each time and did a couple of stints in rehab.”

  “Nothing current?”

  “No, but get this. His father was Hiram Lazar, the guy who founded Daihanu. The schmuck who got murdered by one of his own bots.”

  The old detective recalls the case and the personnel to whom it was assigned. He had his doubts about the investigation
but was too green back then to voice dissent.

  “Think we should take him in?”

  “For what?” The old detective leads his partner down the stairs.

  “For bangin’ a bot.”

  He waves off the idea as absurd. “With all that’s happening tonight, if we arrested a man for illegal fornication we’d be laughed out of the precinct.”

  The young partner drops his cigarette and grounds it out on the carpet with his cheap shoe.

  “You know what we used to do with fucks like him back in the barrio?” They round the second-floor landing in their descent back to the street.

  “We used to string them up with their botwhore girlfriends and put a couple of burning tires around their necks.”

  As he opens the door to Normandie Boulevard, the old detective sighs uneasily and rests a hand on his young partner’s back. He hopes someday to quell the anger that narrows the vision out of his one good eye. It’ll take a great deal of work to groom Detective Ochoa into a decent policeman, and there isn’t much time left in which to do it.

  SEVEN

  Drip Kills

  Alone in the ransacked apartment, Eliot examines the card:

  DETECTIVE JEAN-MICHEL FLAUBERT—HOMICIDE

  Crisp, black font on a sturdy, white stock. Old school, opts for paper instead of a brane. Quality costs money unless he makes the cards himself. A meticulous man, his shoes looked like they were shined before his shift. He could solve this crime in a day if he had the incentive. But justice is not an incentive. Not for:

  DETECTIVE JEAN-MICHEL FLAUBERT—HOMICIDE.

  With restrictions. There should be an asterisk next to the word “Homicide” and then on the back of the card:

  *ANDROIDS NOT INCLUDED.

  Will look for a stolen car but not a free roamer. Places more value on a car because a car is property. I own the car but not the bot. Because no heartbeat owns her, she is not protected by any local, state, or federal law. According to:

  DETECTIVE JEAN-MICHEL FLAUBERT—HOMICIDE

  He flips the card back and forth in his fingers. He knows he didn’t commit the crime but nonetheless blames himself for the conditions under which it took place. He should have worked harder, faster, should have asked his brother for the boat months ago instead of assuming Shelley would never give it to him. Why did I have to be nagged, he wonders, what laziness or doubt inhibited me? Was it the inertia of habit or the drip lulling me into complacency? I could have made it a priority to get Iris out of town as soon as she told me she was being followed. I could have set her up in a hotel or insisted she hide in my apartment. I could have done something, anything—I could have acted immediately to get her out of harm’s way.