Chapter Thirty-Six

Valerie

When a knock comes at the door, Valerie doesn’t even respond. She doesn’t feel like talking to anyone or doing a damn thing. She’s still in the clothes she was wearing yesterday and is sprawled out on Aaron’s crappy green couch. She’s been staring at that painting he liked so much for the last hour or so, thinking about him. There’s something about the piece that’s eerily familiar to her like she’s seen it before, but somewhere else.

Instead of another knock, she hears the sound of keys and then the doorknob turns. She can’t imagine who it could be, the cops, the property manager, or whatever, but she still doesn’t stir. She could give a shit right now.

As soon as Clarice’s beautiful innocent face pokes through the doorway, the smell of eggs and bacon floods the room. She quickly turns her face away and tries to force her eyes from watering. She can’t believe the things she’d said to her yesterday, and here she is, bringing her breakfast.

She stifles her emotions and sits up when Clarice sets the tray full of food down on the coffee table in front of her. Both Five and Arma follow in behind her and sit around her, trying to put on hopeful faces. Clarice pours them all cups of hot water, but only puts bags of tea and milk in hers and her own.

“Marco gathered up Aaron’s things and gave them to me. I figured I should leave them with you. It’s his wallet and keys and whatever was in his pockets. I couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t have his ID in there.”

“Doesn’t surprise me. He doesn’t have a car either. I don’t think he was the regular kind of guy you can just look up on the Internet if you know what I mean.”

“Explains why no authorities have shown up yet. Maybe his DNA isn’t even in the system. Do you think he might have been a criminal?”

“That would explain a lot, but no. He might have left the country a long time ago, but it never left him.”

Clarice pauses before taking another sip of her tea. “And he was from the north? I wonder if any of those tales are true.”

She swishes her hand at Clarice, motioning that her worries are simply nonsense. “He was perfectly fine. Maybe a little introverted, but he was a simple and good person.”

Five doesn’t look up from the little white cup in her lap while she slowly turns it around and around in her hands. “I wish he could be back already. How long do we have to wait like this?”

She’s been putting a lot of thought into that same question too. She still has that terrible feeling that it won’t be him that comes back, but just a robot with a dead man’s memories. She’s never believed that people have a soul, or a spirit anyway, but she is pretty sure that whatever made him who he was, can’t be brought back with science.

She would never dare say that in front of Five or Arma though. She looks up at them, trying to feel or sense if they are alive, for real. It makes her feel like a bad person, like she’s lost her way and she can’t believe in anything anymore.

“It’ll just be a couple of days is all, don’t you worry. You know, it took a year just to make the two of you. A couple of days is nothing right?” She watches a tiny start of a smile form on Five’s face, but only lasts for a moment.

She wishes that she was naïve enough to believe that he’ll be back. As she dwells on the thought and sips her tea, she wonders why she doesn’t believe it. It’s not like he ever believed in life after death either, and yet he believed in Five, right from the start. If there is no such thing as a soul, and there really is absolutely nothing after death, then replicating his mind might actually be the true path of resurrection. Who’s to say that it wouldn’t be him?

If Aaron never had a soul to begin with, they wouldn’t have to worry about it being gone. Everything that he ever was, could merely be physical, and now it’s been saved. Like any data, a copy is just as valid as the original. No one other than Five and Arma has ever made it beyond death. No human, regardless of their religion, can irrefutably know the truth of what lies beyond. Maybe what they’re doing at work is the only way to not disappear forever.

She wonders what the real Aaron will say to her after being brought back. Is love something that can be copied? There’s only one way to find out. After all, It’s what she’ll be doing in the end herself. Maybe she won’t be so critical once she’s just a copy too.

Clarice has to get her attention again by reaching out and waving her hand in front of her face. “Valerie, you gonna eat your eggs? I put a lot of butter in ‘em, the way you like.”

With a renewed inspiration, the tragedy of what happened seems to shed some of its barbs. She fills her mouth with a large fork full of the eggs and starts chomping on the end of a bacon strip at the same time. “Five, Arma, go and get dressed, nicely, were goin’ back to Werker. We have some shit to straighten out.”

Rather than trying to pull things together from the outside, like she and Marco have been doing, she decides she should go back to work and take things over from the inside, but officially. With Marco’s help, they could take the lead on the Five-Series project and make sure it serves their purpose from now on.

With both Paul, Barry, and Gabriel all unseated from their podiums, they should be able to take complete control. It’s not like the other board members will tattle, or do anything about it. They’re all in on the scam too, throwing corporate money at Paul’s little project, all in hopes that they won’t have to die with so much unspent money.

While Five and Arma are picking out some of her and her sister’s clothes to wear, she and Clarice talk a little bit about how they’re all going to move forward through the whole mess. Since her truck is still at Marco’s, where Arma left it on the sidewalk, Clarice is going to have to drive them back there first.

It feels weird locking Aaron’s door when they leave. It feels like she’s closing the door on his life. When she turns the key, the reality of his death starts crawling its way back up her spine.

After Clarice drops the three of them off at the Marco’s, they all squeeze into the cab of her little hot rod. Five, being the smallest, has to squish in the middle. Short on space, Arma rolls her window down and lays her forearm out along the door. When they pull up in front of the main doors, they all walk in like they already own the place. Technicians out on the floor take notice of them as if they’ve already been expecting something to happen.

Arma has decided to go bald this time, leaving her long amber hair at home. Her smooth black skull makes her look more daunting, and somehow even taller. Every person that realizes who she is and that she is back, stops what they are doing to stare. She has cut the sleeves off of her old grey tracksuit and is leaving it unzipped almost down to her crotch. She lords her new body over everyone that once called her ugly.

Five is wearing a white blouse and black skirt again. She liked the way it made her feel last time, and it reminds her of Aaron. She is in her typical crisp clean pair of jeans and a nice knit sweater top. The first place they stop is the locker room, so she can put her long white lab coat on. She is still one of the project leads, and she needs to be recognized as Dr. Morgan.

One of her coworkers turns to her in the hall and looks up from their tablet. “Hey Dr. Morgan, I thought I remember hearing something about you transferring back to AMF, is that true?”

“No, I was thinking about it, but there’s been some significant movement in upper management and I’ll have to stay.” She doesn’t even slow down her stride while answering them and keeps walking.

She stops by the scanning lab momentarily, to leave Five with Marco. She will want to have both her and Arma’s scans updated in turns, but Five will be first. She wants to bring Arma to attend her meetings with the board this time. She could use the support of some shock and awe this time around. Clearly, Five’s sunny disposition gave them all the wrong impression last time.

As she progresses down the upper office hallway, from one director’s office to the next, she keeps getting the same story from them. They bluster, tell her that she’s no longer even an employee in the research center and that it is ultimately Barry’s call. That’s when she lets Arma chime in on why it’s not Barry’s call anymore. At that point, they usually go right for the phone, to call security. Arma, getting the hang of it, beats them to it every time. For theatrics, she crushes the hand-unit in her fists and wrings all of the pieces out on top of their desk.

With the front of her suit unzipped, they usually look at her chest when she leans forward in front of them. That’s when she pounds her fist down on the desk, making them almost shit. “Barry will not be coming back, Paul will not be coming back, and with the way things are going, neither will you!”

Playing into the classic good-cop bad-cop routine, she buts in and talks her down. “That’s only if you feel the project has reached its end. I for one, have a positive outlook on it and plan to take things to the next level. After all, the process has been proven, and we’re ready to give it the well-needed stability it deserves. Since leadership over this project has taken a hard downturn, I’ll be taking Barry’s seat, and I will be straightening all this back out.”

Arma’s tone and face soften to what appears to be quite agreeable, and then she gives them their chance to comply. “Are you in, or do you need to be ironed out?”

“Their answer is always “In.”

When the two of them barge in on Sabrina Jones, the now most senior member of the review board, they catch her receiving a panicked call from Mr. Drexler, whose office they had just come from. It sounds like he is pleading with her to find a way to stop them. Sabrina, an elderly and experienced woman, sits back in her seat and pleasantly holds her palm up to them while she handles the man on the other end of the line. Her voice is smooth and controlled.

“Garry, dear, just calm the hell down will ya. You never gave two shits about Barry, and don’t start pretending to now. If you expect me to solve all your problems all the time like this, it’ll be your door I put her name on. She hangs up the phone and rolls her eyes. “Well, Miss Valerie Morgan… seems you’ve got everyone in fits over this. So, how can I help you, or should I say, how can we all help each other.”

“Fuck Paul, Fuck Barry, and Fuck Gabriel. They’ve screwed this whole thing up with their little personal agendas. If we’re going to keep this process alive, we’re gonna need a straight-forward setup, guidelines, and some damn transparency between us. The roof on this thing is going to come down if all the little pillars keep leaning in their own directions.”

Sabrina smiles a small smile and then folds her thin hands in front of her on the desk. “Barry’s seat is yours, but this is not a one-horse show, Dr. Morgan. We’ve all staked our lives on this too, so you’ll understand the territorialism. Many things are in motion here and you are but one cog in this machine. Just because you don’t like something, doesn’t mean you’re going to change it by throwing your weight around. You’re a new player here, and you’ll learn to live with what you can’t change… or you won’t.”

Sabrina gives her Barry’s seat but more or less sidelines her for now. She is expected to understand and commit, before anything else. She’s confident in her resolution with Sabrina, but she isn’t so ready to trust her. She’ll still be keeping her role very hands-on with the project.

When she and Arma head back down to catch up with Marco, She has Five and Arma swap places in the scanning station. She fills him in on the terms that she and the uppers have agreed to. He is dubious of the game she is playing and tries to warn her that she cannot, for a second, believe she won’t end up with a knife in her back.

After fruitlessly trying to poke her plan full of holes, he confidently finds that she’s already one step ahead of his concerns. Eventually, their scheming ends with a sly smile on both of their faces. Their confidence is shaken by a call from Gabriel. He is at the point where Aaron’s mind is going to need some altering before they move forward. He needs Marco’s help.

After taking a break for lunch, Valerie spends some needed time alone in her office, going over Aaron’s data on the network. She has no clue how to look at any of it but is trying to take in the sheer size of his mind. She can see why there’s no point in trying to understand any of it. Simply copying it all seems like an impossible endeavor.

Startling her, there is a rather hard knock on the door. She can’t imagine who it could be, but before she can ask, two men barge on in. She immediately recognizes them as investigators. Their formal-looking body armor and heavy weapons make introductions unnecessary. They don’t even take notice when her jaw drops. It’s probably only normal in their line of work.

The tall light-skinned man with a shaved head introduces himself as Officer Cris Freneaux. His partner, Gerald Curry, a younger and burly man shoves his hand out for a sincere handshake. Cris looks to be fairly relaxed while Gerald has the disposition of a contractor that’s used to using his rifle. It takes a minute, but she recognizes them. They’ve been in the news from time to time, handling high profile cases.

“Oh, I recognize you guys, you were on the TV about some space pirates or something.” She does her best to act like she has no idea why they would be in her office. They don’t look to be amused by her space pirates comment though.

If they sense she’s up to something, they’ll tear through Werker like a paper bag. Investigators hold a position of great leverage. They’re not held to strict guidelines or procedures like other law enforcement officials are. They have the authority to dispense legal action in whatever fashion they feel is fit.

The public seems to respond to their use well enough. So far, individuals that have been titled as investigators have held the position up to its expectations. They are as understanding as they are vicious, but it’s never a good sign when they show up.

Investigators usually only assume control of a case when the circumstances are extraordinary, which is why their presence is a little bit of a shock to most. There being in her office is not a good sign for the program. The usual by-the-book legal system is not very suitable for properly handling outlying cases like what they are involved in. In instances where considerable monetary power can sway the legal system, or where the boundaries between what is legal and what is not are too grey, they’ll take over. Regardless of loopholes, or what the law says in writing, these officers are expected to use common sense and do what is right.

She folds her hands in her lap and does her best to appear cheery. “Well, gentlemen, what is it that brings you to Werker?”

“Things have been slow on our end lately, so we picked up this peculiar case that seems to be getting people a little ruffled up recently. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it yet, but it seems a robot might’ve been involved in some murders outside of the city.”

“Murder? A robot, and outside the city?”

“Yes, normally we won’t venture too far out, but it only sounds sensible that this incident was rooted here in Welan. You were referred to us as being a broad-fielded expert on robots of this nature.”

“Of what nature?”

Gerald leans forward and skips to the point. “One that could do something like this. The evidence indicates that a high-end model, one like one from AMF might have been used. That’s where you used to work, correct?”

“We recovered a small amount of a specific polymer that was burnt onto a murder weapon found at the crime scene. Also, it had no shoes on, men’s size eleven or twelve maybe. We’re pretty sure it was an AMF machine, but that could be any of probably thousands. We were told that none of your machines are all that cognitively sophisticated, especially enough so to accommodate such … complex savagery. So, that leads us to our next question. How, and who might be able to modify one of your unit’s controllers for something like this?”

Gerald fiddles with his rifle’s safety switch flicking it off and then on again. “Whoever did this was no amateur. This was some specifically tailored and twisted kind of shit.”

That question does hit a little closer to home than she would have preferred. She knows Aaron is one of few that would have the skillset for something like that, and the access credentials to modify a locked controller as well. He even has his own command card writer. He could already be on a very short list of suspects so she has to get them off the scent.

“Someone breaking into a Werker, or even old model AMF controller and modifying it would not be likely, nor an efficient means to make a robot capable of killing on its own. Behavior like that is an incredibly difficult thing to emulate, given it was done as you say. Was it done mechanically, or say, personally?

“Cris puffs his cheeks up when he exhales, raising his eyebrows too. “I’m pretty sure this was done in anger.”

“Honestly, and I don’t mean to sound like it’s obvious, but I would look at arena contestant developers.”

“You mean machine battle owners?”

“Well, yeah, I guess. Apart from their experience in already designing machines to have destructive skills, they almost always write to their custom controllers. They’d have the skillset, to get a robot to use specific methods if that’s what you’re implying. Werker units have always been known for their security.

If the investigators start chasing down owners of fighting robots, they’re going to be on a wild goose chase. None of the league competitors are going to be forthcoming nor easy to track down once word of investigator trouble starts getting around. If the two of them follow her advice, it’ll at least save her a couple of days before they wise up.

The two men thank her for her help and stomp out of her office as abruptly as they had come in. They hang outside her door for a minute, figuring where they should move on to next. She can hear them well enough out there through the large gap at the bottom of her door.

“That was a fucking waste of time.”

“Told ya she was gonna be hot though.”

“Eh, she was ok.”

“This crime has bad-blood written all over it. Dude, I’m telling you, no robot would have done it like that. It was totally personal.”

“I do not want to hear any more of your silly idea about a guy with a robotic arm, Gerald.”

As soon as she knows the two are gone for sure, she picks up her phone and considers warning the others. When she thinks about it, she decides not to. There’s no knowing if they might already be watching her. They could easily be listening in on her line by now. She’ll have to see them personally. It makes her think about Mikel and she wonders what he might say happened. He’s probably the one they were looking for, to begin with, because of Ray. If they find him first, it could all be over.

It’s already after noon and he still hasn’t shown up for work yet. Her stomach feels like it’s trying to climb its way out, just thinking about what he could be up to. His home is only a few miles away, and she might be able to beat the officers there if she leaves out the back right now. She throws her lab coat down in her chair and hurries down the hall to the parking lot. On the way out through the guard station, she asks if the investigators have left yet as if she were looking for them. They have, but it sounds like they had plans to stop by and see AMF for themselves.