Retiree 2.0 Page 12

  The receptionist, apparently annoyed at Alana’s pushiness, said, “A gunshot victim, huh? This is south LA. Can you be more specific?”

  “Burly black man, bald head. Several holes—”

  The woman threw up her right hand and began manipulating her computer screen with her left, “Hold on... He’s in ICU, bay three.”

  Alana scanned the corridors until she spotted the sign that pointed the way.

  The receptionist said, cattily, “You’re welcome.”

  Alana strode off without acknowledging the employee’s jab. As she stepped onto the escalator to the next floor, it occurred to her that she was reverting to her old ways, being unnecessarily insensitive. She considered the possibility that any length of cybernetic existence was sufficient to sour the milk of human kindness.

  As Alana stepped off the escalator and headed down the long hallway toward the main ICU entrance in the distance, she started looking at the various examples of folk art that hung on the walls, and further noticed that they appeared to have been created by children. Her most recent visit to an adult art gallery had fooled her into thinking that the works on display might have been more significant to the art world. One drawing caused her to stop. It was a panorama in crayon of a stick figure family gathered around a bed with exaggerated tears raining from their oval eyes. A silver strand snaked from the chest of the white-haired patient, presumably a dying loved one, and ascended until it reached the nape of the neck of a younger version of the same character who was floating above the bed, discernible by his gray-and-red, plaid-patterned shirt. At the top of the drawing was written, ‘Grandpa 2.0.’ Alana almost felt something, and she knew it, but it was only in her synthetic brain. She had no heart to touch.

  As she resumed her pace toward her destination, her Vira said, “Chief Inspector Graves, you have a call from a mister Edward Jenkins.”

  Alana slowed down again, turning to look up and down the corridor, confirming that it was empty, as she said, “Answer.”

  Jenkins’ smooth voice slid into her ear, “Hello, Inspector Graves?”

  “Chief Inspector.”

  “Is farm-raised lobster acceptable?”

  Alana stopped again. She looked up and down the corridor again before answering, “You were being serious?”

  Jenkins said, “Of course! I thought you were a very interesting lady, and I wanted to humbly ask for the opportunity to get to know you better.”

  “I don’t think Merriam-Webster’s definition of ‘humble’ is—”

  “Put me on videophone and I’ll show you. All cyborgs can do that, right?”

  “Well, yes, but you won’t be able to see me—no, wait, you can. Hold on.” Alana instinctively reached for her camera drone. She was stymied because it was still in her overcoat pocket, and she had tossed that into the backseat of the police car. That jacket served a greater purpose than style. It’s most important function was that it obviated her need for a handbag. She said, “On second thought, no, you can’t. However...”

  Alana activated her virtual user interface and opened a video window. Framed in the center, Edward Jenkins was down on one knee. Behind him was the daytime view from his office windows, with a panoramic view of the LA smog layer obscuring other nearby skyscrapers. A banner was draped across the top half of the window, and printed in a stylish script font were the words, “Pretty Please!” Green, orange, and white bunting framed the window. Jenkins’ left hand held aloft a large, red, plastic lobster.

  Jenkins smiled slyly, “Would Wednesday night work? I’ll send a car for you.”

  “Where—”

  Jenkins winked as he pointed a finger-gun at the camera and dropped the thumb-hammer, “That would be a surprise!”

  When Alana said, “You’re still a suspect you know,” she was unable to make it sound even the least bit menacing.

  Jenkins stood up, apparently tired of kneeling for who knows how long, and said, “I’m the prime suspect in an open-and-shut case of infatuation.”

  Alana laughed aloud, and was completely surprised that it almost sounded like a real, human laugh, even though she was laughing at Jenkins instead of with him. She was smiling as she answered, “Pencil me in and call me back Wednesday afternoon to confirm, if the reservations are still good.”

  Jenkins stood at attention, placed one arm across his waist, and bowed, speaking with a very poorly executed French accent, “Oui, mademoiselle.”

  With a quick, “Vira, end,” Alana terminated the call. She caught her reflection in the glass of one of the framed drawings and looked askance at herself. Did that really happen? And did she really say yes?

  Alana strode through ICU waiting room entrance with a grin and a slightly elevated level of energy in her gait. SWAT Leader Kyeong and trooper Michaels were seated nearby. They sprang to their feet and approached Alana, with the Korean saying, “Ma’am, they wouldn’t let us stay with the prisoner, so we waited for someone—you. Orders?”

  Alana nodded, “I want someone guarding the prisoner, but I’ll probably have to arrange it. Stand by here until then. Grab lunch if you haven’t already. And one thing I want to make perfectly clear—when I heard Maggie talked about payback—I want this man kept alive. Understood?”

  Both troopers nodded, stepping away and conversing amongst themselves softly.

  Alana walked straight to the robotic gatekeeper who stood sentry at the entrance to the intensive care unit’s medical bays. She flashed her badge, “I need to see the patient in bay three, stat.”

  The robot, a gynoid dressed in a medical orderly’s tan uniform, said in a deliberately soothing and sympathetic voice, “I’m afraid that the patient in bay three is in critical condition and cannot have any visitors at the moment, not even police officers.”

  Alana tapped her foot impatiently and narrowed her gaze, her good mood having proven to be ephemeral, “I just need to talk to his doctors.”

  The robot said, “That much is allowed. Turn left at the first intersection, and bay three will be on your left.”

  There was an audible click, and a red light above the nearby doorway to the ICU’s inner sanctum turned green and slid open. Alana hurried inside and quickly found the room she was seeking. The outer doors were glass, and although one of them was open, the curtains were pulled shut. A trio of medical personnel in white, blue, and green uniforms who were standing around a desk near the room, looking over a computer screen which listed a plethora of information about the patient as well as a real-time monitor of his vital signs. The blue-uniformed man whose nametag read, ‘RN Brown,’ excused himself from the conference, stepped toward Alana, and asked, “I’m his nurse. May I help you?”

  Alana showed her badge again, “Chief Inspector Graves, Precinct Four. I want to talk to you about the man in bay three.”

  “I’m not allowed to divulge information unless you have a warrant. Or if you’re an immediate relative, and can prove it.”

  Alana looked past the nurse and zoomed in on the computer screen, and although she only recognized some of the information that was being shown, including physical dimensions of the patient, blood type, and other basic data, the name field read, ‘Unknown.’ She asked, “Does, ‘his arresting officer,’ count?”

  Nurse Brown turned toward the pony-tailed woman in the white uniform and asked, “Doctor Vlad, I think I need help here.”

  As the tall, obviously South Asian woman stepped up, Alana asked, “Vlad?”

  The woman smiled, offering her hand. “Doctor Vadlamundi,” she said with no hint whatsoever of a South Asian accent, or of any accent that Alana could detect. Her voice was dialectally neutral, as was her demeanor, professional, and neither friendly nor hostile. “How can I help you, Inspector?”

  Alana repressed the urgent need to correct the doctor regarding her full title and proceeded with alacrity toward her point, “Your patient may be both in danger and a danger to your staff.”

  The doctor glanced toward bay three and shook her head, �
��Given the level of sedation he is under—”

  “You don’t understand, and I can’t go into the details any more than you can until I apparently get a proper warrant. But I’m going to need to post armed guards on the ICU entrances and on his room, and enforce a full security lockdown until you can move him to a secure room.”

  Vadlamundi said, unfazed, “Though I’ve been briefed about the possibility, I’ve never had one of my patients placed under a ‘security lockdown’ before.”

  Alana began, “Then let me explain how it works...”

  Sunday, 9 July, 20:00

  The doctor said, “You didn’t waste much time getting back here,” as, with a snap, he plugged a cable somewhere that Rhys couldn’t see. As he leaned over Rhys’ shoulder, the doctor’s nametag was in Ben’s face, ‘Dr. Phelps — Chief Cybersurgeon.’

  Ben said, “My apologies. The circumstances were somewhat beyond my control. I wasn’t sure I needed to come in at all. I might be wasting your time, but my superior officer insisted that I get the yellow light examined.”

  Doctor Phelps walked over to a console monitor and turned it on. A schematic of Rhys’ artificial body appeared. After a moment, two yellow labels appeared to the side, with lines pointing to locations inside his chest cavity, which looked nothing like a human body and everything like one of the ‘visual robotics’ kits Rhys had tinkered with as a child as his father tried to shoe-horn him into his footsteps as an engineer. Phelps crossed his arms and harrumphed.

  Rhys asked, “Is that a technical term of which I am unaware?”

  Phelps tapped the screen with his finger and the picture zoomed in to a pair of oblong boxes that were installed about where his heart would have been had he still been alive. “What’s your current battery charge level?”

  Rhys still had to think about how to use his interface. He looked to the upper right, and an options menu expanded. From the list, he chose, ‘VIRA Options,’ and from the sub-list, he chose, ‘Display Battery Level.’ In the lower right corner of his status display, a small picture of an old-style battery appeared, with a yellow-tinted fill pattern and a text label that said, ‘42%.’ He relayed that information to Doctor Phelps.

  The doctor asked, “When did you last recharge?”

  Ben said, “This morning. Approximately oh-seven-hundred hours.”

  “That is a bit low for only a few hours, unless you were running a marathon. Were you running a marathon?”

  Ben shook his head.

  Phelps asked, “Has anything unusual happened to you this morning?”

  Ben shrugged, “I took several rounds of batting practice in the afternoon, and several rounds of ten-millimeter in the chest.”

  Phelps scowled, “You could have told me that up-front. The getting shot part, of course.” He grabbed a pair of needle-nosed pliers from a nearby toolbox and approached Rhys.

  Ben said, “I thought that the holes in my shirt would have been enough to give it away.”

  Phelps squinted, “I guess you’ll need a new shirt. Don’t tell anyone, but I have some macular degeneration. I have trouble with low-contrasts. Unbutton said shirt, please.”

  Ben complied, and Doctor Phelps began probing the holes in the center of his chest. As he removed a flattened slug and held it aloft for Ben to see, Phelps said, “It would appear that someone has assaulted your battery. Tight shot grouping too.”

  Ben said, “I think it was an autoburst.”

  Phelps scowled again, “I presume that you were not wearing your body armor.”

  Ben shrugged, “My boss never does, so I stopped when I retired. It isn’t mandatory for cyborgs in the department.”

  Phelps dropped the bullet onto a nearby table and returned for more. The second slug required a fishing expedition, during which, Phelps said, “Your boss should change that policy. It’s going to cost him or her a battery replacement, and that’s the second-most expensive component in your body.”

  Ben felt compelled to inquire, “What’s the most expensive part?”

  Phelps pulled a second slug out of Rhys’ body, palmed it, and tapped Ben on the top of his skull with the pliers, resulting in a dull, vaguely metallic thump, like an overweight cat landing on a tin roof, “Your brain. Who’s your superior officer?”

  “DCI Graves.”

  Phelps stood, closing his eyes and placing his hand, still holding the pliers, to his forehead. He shook his head as a peculiar grin crossed his face, reflecting, to Ben’s best guess, amusement.

  Ben continued, “She’s retired as well. Do you know her?”

  “We’ve met on occasion. It seems as if she’s teaching you all the ways to wind up in the shopital.”

  “It’s a dangerous job. Private handguns have been banned as long as I can remember, but we still see a lot of them.” Ben tapped his chest, “Case in point.”

  Phelps said, “Can I ask you something about your boss?”

  “One can always ask. The reply depends upon the question.”

  The doctor returned to the console and tapped the screen a few times. The display changed to a logistical system. As he placed the order for Rhys’ new ‘heart,’ he continued, “Have you noticed any drastic changes in her personality since the last time she was resurrected?”

  Ben glanced away, pondering the question, before answering, “Why? And how drastic do you mean?”

  “The reason I ask is that we had a major, internal audit of retiree cases. Apparently, one of our former patients went insane once she was released from care, and it cost Zumpco a couple of million credits. The last few times I worked on Inspector Graves, she was more...forward...than I remember her being when I was her primary care technician. Enough that I noticed it. I wanted to see if there was anything to warrant a checkup.”

  Ben said, “Chief Inspector Graves is an exemplary officer and a paragon of virtue. Granted, she has a few eccentricities, but nothing that she’s not had since I’ve known her.”

  “That’s good to hear, and all I needed to know. Now, though, I want to ask you about yourself. About how you’re adjusting to retirement.”

  “I’m not insane, at least as far as I can tell. If I am, my coworkers are being mum about it.”

  The doctor asked, “Do you have any family with whom you stay in contact?”

  “Actually, no. I was an only child, and my parents have both passed on. The police department is my family now. Is that important?”

  “I ask because relatives or a spouse would probably be the first to notice if anything was out of the ordinary about you.”

  “Spouse?” Rhys sighed, “I guess that’s out of the question now, isn’t it.”

  “Does that bother you? That your biology is different now?”

  Ben stared straight ahead, out of the window and at the dark-gray, solar-paneled rooftops of the nearby buildings. He eventually said, “I don’t know. This is really the first time I’ve thought about that.”

  “How do you feel, in general?”

  Ben said, “I don’t really feel anything.”

  “Anxiety, excitement, anger, fear? Nothing at all?”

  “I became somewhat enthusiastic about getting to attend the All-Star Game Saturday night. But...”

  The doctor finished ordering a new battery for Rhys, then crossed his arms again and leaned against the table, “Go on.”

  “Inspector Graves came with me, but it turned out that she hated baseball as passionately as I used to love it. That put something of a damper on the experience.”

  Phelps said, “So, you did feel something?”

  “Well... Yes. But it wasn’t... Like it used to be. Like I used to feel.” Rhys looked Doctor Phelps in the eye, “I’m becoming just like her, aren’t I? Dispassionate.”

  Phelps asked, “If you would like, I can write you a referral to friend of mine who specializes in cyberpsychology, specifically in post-retirement transitions. Don’t pretend that it isn’t difficult, and don’t feel as if you have to make this adjustment alone. There are
a lot of people who can help.”

  “I think I’ll be okay. There’s always the Socratic Method to fall back upon.”

  Phelps grinned, “Just remember that dialectics takes two, and just call if you feel you need someone gestalt to have those kind of discussions with. In the meantime, lie down on the table there and I’ll get you prepped for a battery replacement.”

  One battery replacement, one epidermal reconstruction, and one hour later, Detective Benjamin Rhys found himself again on the road, this time headed toward the Los Angeles Navy Hospital, having confirmed that it was the terminus for treatment reached by his immediate superior, Detective Inspector MacGruder.

  As his police car stopped and went through the Sunday afternoon traffic congestion of Long Beach, his Vira alert pinged. He answered without screening the call, “Detective Rhys.”

  Chief Bennett’s voice blared in his ear, “Rhys. Good time to talk?”

  “Sure thing, Chief.”

  “Maggie’s doctor says that he’s going to be in rehab for at least two weeks, even with regen therapy on his leg. I wanted to let you know that I’m going to assign his case back to DCI Graves, and I’m going to have to put you back under her temporarily. Is that a problem?”

  Rhys replied, “It might be problematic for DI MacGruder, but it’s kosher with me.”

  “Have you talked to Maggie yet?”

  “I’m on the way to see him now.”

  “If he asks, tell him I’ll assume responsibility for any political fallout. All he has to do is get better.”

  “Affirmative, Chief. Does DCI Graves know yet?”

  “Not yet. I tried to call her, but I got a ‘restricted communications area’ warning and had to leave her a message.”

  Rhys said, “She’s probably in an ICU no-phone zone. I’ll tell her when I return to pick her up if she doesn’t get the message before then.”