"Look," the lawyer said, softening, "I’m not here to make things difficult for your department. We don’t want to set some crazy legal precedent either."
Hesitantly, I stepped aside.
She didn’t waste any time rolling briskly past. "I understand it was a violent assault?"
"We’re still figuring that out."
Mika startled and stood as we reached the living room. The woman smiled and went over to shake her hand. "Hi Mika, I’m Holly. Executive Pleasures sent me to help you. Have a seat, please."
"No." Mika shook her head. "I want a real lawyer. Not a company lawyer."
Holly ignored her and plunked herself and her bags on the sofa beside Mika. "Well, you’re still our property, so I’m the only lawyer you’re getting. Now have a seat."
"I thought she was the dead guy’s property," I said.
"Legally, no. The Mika Model Service End User Agreement explicitly states that Executive Pleasures retains ownership. It simplifies recall issues." Holly was pulling out her laptop. She dug out a sheaf of papers and offered them to me. "These outline the search warrant process so you can make a Non-Aggregated Data Request from our servers. I assume you’ll want the owner’s user history. We can’t release any user-specific information until we have the warrant."
"That in the End User Agreement, too?"
Holly gave me a tight smile. "Discretion is part of our brand. We want to help, but we’ll need the legal checkboxes ticked."
"But…" Mika was looking from her to me with confusion. "I want a real lawyer."
"You don’t have money, dearie. You can’t have a real lawyer."
"What about public defenders?" Mika tried. "They will—"
Holly gave me an exasperated look. "Will you explain to her that she isn’t a citizen, or a person? You’re not even a pet, honey."
Mika looked to me, desperate. "Help me find a lawyer, detective. Please? I’m more than a pet. You know I’m more than a pet. I’m real."
Holly’s gaze shot from her, to me, and back again. "Oh, come on. She’s doing that thing again." She gave me a disgusted look. "Hero complex, right? Save the innocent girl? That’s your thing?"
"What’s that supposed to mean?"
Holly sighed. "Well, if it isn’t the girl who needs rescuing, it’s the naughty schoolgirl. And if it’s not the naughty schoolgirl, it’s the kind, knowing older woman." She popped open her briefcase and started rummaging through it. "Just once, it would be nice to meet a guy who isn’t predictable."
I bristled. "Who says I’m predictable?"
"Don’t kid yourself. There really aren’t that many buttons a Mika Model can push."
Holly came up with a screwdriver. She turned and rammed it into Mika’s eye.
Mika fell back, shrieking. With her cuffed hands, she couldn’t defend herself as Holly drove the screwdriver deeper.
"What the—?"
By the time I dragged Holly off, it was too late. Blood poured from Mika’s eye. The girl was gasping and twitching. All her movements were wrong, uncoordinated, spasmodic and jerky.
"You killed her!"
"No. I shut down her CPU," said Holly, breathing hard. "It’s better this way. If they get too manipulative, it’s tougher. Trust me. They’re good at getting inside your head."
"You can’t murder someone in front of me!"
"Like I said, not a murder. Hardware deactivation." She shook me off and wiped her forehead, smearing blood. "I mean, if you want to pretend something like that is alive, well, have at her. All the lower functions are still there. She’s not dead, biologically speaking."
I crouched beside Mika. Her cuffed hands kept reaching up to her face, replaying her last defensive motion. A behavior locked in, happening again and again. Her hands rising, then falling back. I couldn’t make her stop.
"Look," Holly said, her voice softening. "It’s better if you don’t anthropomorphize. You can pretend the models are real, but they’re just not."
She wiped off the screwdriver and put it back in her case. Cleaned her hands and face, and started re-zipping her roller bag.
"The company has a recycling center here in the Bay Area for disposal," she said. "If you need more data on the owner’s death, our servers will have backups of everything that happened with this model. Get the warrant, and we can unlock the encryptions on the customer’s relationship with the product."
"Has this happened before?"
"We’ve had two other user deaths, but those were both stamina issues. This is an edge case. The rest of the Mika Models are being upgraded to prevent it." She checked her watch. "Updates should start rolling out at 3 a.m., local time. Whatever made her logic tree fork like that, it won’t happen again."
She straightened her jacket and turned to leave.
"Hold on!" I grabbed her sleeve. "You can’t just walk out. Not after this."
"She really got to you, didn’t she?" She patted my hand patronizingly. "I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s just that hero complex of yours. She pushed your buttons, that’s all. It’s what Mika Models do. They make you think you’re important."
She glanced back at the body. "Let it go, detective. You can’t save something that isn’t there."
(2016)
CASPAR D. LUCKINBILL, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO?
Nick Wolven
Nick Wolven’s fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy & Science Fiction and Clarkesworld, among others. He currently lives in Bronx, NY, and works at Barnard College Library.
I’m on my way to work when the terrorists strike. The first attack nearly kills me. It’s my fault, partly. I’m jaywalking at the time.
There I am, in the middle of Sixth Avenue, an ad truck bearing down in the rightmost lane. I feel a buzz in my pocket and take out my phone. I assume it’s Lisa, calling about the TV. I put it to my ear and hear a scream.
There are screams, and there are screams. This is the real deal. It’s a scream that ripples. It’s a scream that rings. It’s a scream like a mile-high waterfall of glass, like a drill bit in the heart, like a thousand breaking stars.
I stand shaking in the street. The ad truck advances, blowing paint and air, leaving a strip of toothpaste ads in its wake. I have enough presence of mind to step back as the truck chuffs by. I look down and see a smile on my toes: three perfect spray-painted teeth on each new shoe.
When I get to the curb, the screaming has stopped, and a man is speaking from my phone.
"Caspar D. Luckinbill! Attention, Caspar D. Luckinbill! What you just heard were the screams of Ko Nam, recorded as he was tortured and killed by means of vibrational liquefaction. Men like Ko Nam are murdered every day in the FRF. Caspar D. Luckinbill, what are you going to do?"
What am I going to do? What am I supposed to do? I stand on the curb staring at my phone. I have no idea who Ko Nam is. I have no idea what the FRF is. And what in God’s name is vibrational liquefaction?
I give it a second’s thought, trying my best to be a good, conscientious, well-informed citizen of the world. But it’s 9:15 and I have teeth on my shoes, and I’m already late for work.
My employer is the contractor for the external relations department of the financial branch of a marketing subsidiary of a worldwide conglomerate that makes NVC-recognition software. NVC: nonverbal communication. The way you walk. The way you move. Our programs can pick you out of a crowd, from behind, at eighty paces, just by the way you swing your arms. Every move you make, every breath you take. Recognizing faces is so old school.
We claim to be the company that launched ubiquitous computing. Every company claims that, of course. That’s what makes it so ubiquitous.