They Don't Care About Robots, Do They?

4

Not that a dismantled bot could cause nightmares, but spending time giving statements, to cops that had better things to do, was not a great way to spend an evening. The picture on my slate looked no different to the way the alley looked now. My slate didn't have a projection facility, so I had to pinch and zoom over different parts of the picture to work out the things I wanted to see.

Another thing my slate didn't have was a flashlight. In this low light, right in the middle of the night cycle, street lamps busted and flickering, I had to rely on my cybernetics instead. I factored through several wavelengths until I found one that brought everything out in sharp focus. There was probably a word for that wavelength, but I didn't care.

My first stop on this crime scene examination was that thing on the wall. It wasn't graffiti. Not the normal kind, at least. No tag that I'd ever seen before. No play on words or easy political platitudes that made the kids feel all grown up, giving it to the establishment good, in a place the 'establishment' would never see. I tore away a couple of old, peeling play bills to get a better look.

I knew it looked familiar. Dangling from the swan-like neck of a beautiful, metal and plastic broad. Except, this wasn't the same after all. Sauda's chain held an 'A' embraced by a 'C', a symbol for their Ascendent Convergence. This symbol had a subtle, but significant difference. A 'D' in place of the 'A'. Crouching, I took a few pictures with my slate, hoping the old tech could make out the symbol. If not, I'd come back tomorrow and take some during the day-cycle.

Rising to my feet, one hand fell to my hip, flicking my raincoat aside, and the other raised to my chin. An old habit that I had never seemed able to stop. The days when the feel of my fingers rasping against three-day old stubble would help me think were long gone. My synthetic skin didn't produce stubble, so my fingers moved against smooth almost-flesh that didn't feel like skin at all.

I took another look at the pictures on my slate, taking note of where all the dismantled parts of the bot had been placed after it had ceased to function. The arms and legs over there, about two feet from the bot's trunk. Chips and wires and tiny circuitboards lined up, in order of removal, right here, beside the bot. But something didn't seem right. Something had caught my artificial eyes, but my slow human brain had yet to register it.

Those few brain cells I had crushed with cheap whiskey may have come in handy after all. I took a step back, surveying the area in as wide a view as I could. Everything seemed as it should. Rats had long since stopped rooting through this trash, anything worth eating rotted away by now. People didn't normally come this far down the alley, otherwise those guys near the street would have come this far in to get their fill of each other.

My slate lifted up before my face again and I flicked between the picture on the slate's surface and the reality of the alley. Then it hit me. Like a transport tube car coming to a dead stop while in free fall. I pinch zoomed on my slate, taking a good, close look at the ground and then looked at the ground itself.

In the picture, scratches in the surface of the alley floor. In the Real, no scratches. At least, none that any normal eyes could see. I squatted down, running fingers over the area. My skin may not pass anywhere close to human, but the synthetic nerve endings far surpassed that of my old hands. I could feel changes in the surface. Slight striations that anyone else could miss. Even bots. The tech of my skin and eyes, matched with the flexibility of thought in the human brain. A match made in heaven.

I switched through the different filters on my eyes again until they highlighted what I had already found by touch. The surface of the alley was smooth. Too smooth for something of this age and location. A place where any repairs needed were ignored and forgotten, or fixed with tape and anything to hand. Someone had cleared away any sign of those scratches.

Scratches meant a struggle, but, if anyone wanted to bust up a bot, all they'd need to use was a near-field electromagnetic pulse. Illegal, but I could find five places that'd sell me a pair of gloves before I move two blocks. A tap on the back of the bot's cranial systems with NF-EMP gloves and there would be no struggle at all.

What did that mean? The bot came here of its own free will. Something happened and a struggle ensued. I circled the area, running a dozen scenarios through my mind. A bot could overpower a human. At least, most bots could against most humans. I'd seen some bots as weak as kittens and some human mooks that'd give gorillas a hard time. Not that anyone had seen real kittens or gorillas outside of centuries old Earth-That-Was media.

I needed another cigarette. As I continued to run through the possibilities, I rolled out the processed tobacco substitute in the paper substitute, twisting the end. The book of matches I found in my pocket come from a go-go bar on the other side of the Quarter and I consider visiting the place again, tonight, to think this all through.

With my mind wandering, the book of matches slips from my fingers and I remind myself to get the servos checked the next time I have enough dough to afford it. Crouching, I reach for the matches and see something that shouldn't be there, under an old plastic lid, toppled from the box it once covered. Now, that lid covered something else. Something that could just about be the most important thing I could find.

A drop of blood.