The GPS announced, “You have arrived,” and Laughton took manual control to guide it into a parking space across from the main entrance. The lot was full of a wide variety of cars. Clunkers with rusty gashes and missing hubcaps were parked next to squat, angular sports cars worth more than Laughton made in a year.
No one was out front, nor could anyone be seen in the part of the lobby that was visible. “Seems awfully quiet for so many lights,” Laughton said.
“There are humans here,” Kir said, using his thermal vision.
“Freaky metal bastard,” Laughton said.
“Flesh face,” Kir shot back.
“ ‘Flesh face’? Really?”
Kir shrugged. “You turned it personal.”
“But ‘flesh face’?”
They headed for the front entrance. If anyone here was worried about security, their truck had no doubt been spotted the second they turned into the drive. There was no reason to sneak in. As they started up the few stairs to the porch, a figure walked into the lobby from the left. The bend of his shoulders made him human. He must have caught some movement out of the corner of his eye, because he looked their way, and Laughton, stunned, recognized Jones, the missing sims runner. Jones made him at the same time, his eyes going wide. He began to run.
Laughton jumped up the remaining steps, and pulled open the glass door, which was much lighter than he had expected. It banged back on its hinges, but he was already through, Kir right behind him. The robot didn’t know why they were running, but the partners worked together so closely that they moved as a unit.
The wide hallway Jones had gone down had a scattering of people, standing and talking, or going from one doorway to the next. Jones was gone. Laughton went to the closest doorway, and looked in. A robot on a couch was plugged in to a charger, his system shut down.
Laughton’s pulse seemed to fill his chest, running across his shoulder blades. They were still on the preserve, weren’t they? What was a robot doing here?
“What is it?” Kir said behind him.
“A robot.”
“No, the guy we were chasing?”
Laughton turned to Kir, raising his voice. “It’s a goddamn robot,” he said, pointing. “Are we still on the preserve? You said we were on the preserve.”
Kir looked at the inert object sitting on the couch. “Shit,” he said.
“You think? What’s going on here?”
“But the guy we were chasing just now was human.”
“That was Jones, the trafficker who I let go.”
Kir scanned their surroundings. “Come on. He’s over there.”
Laughton could smell the room from several feet away. It showed a sign on the door, the silhouette of a man and a woman, separated by a line: the bathroom. It wouldn’t take long for the john to acquire such a reek of nauseating proportions, just a day or two, but the plumbing to the place must have been off since the founding of the preserve, possibly before that if the place had already become a robot establishment. Nine months of human waste, even if it was only a few humans and for part of the time, could only be withstood by desperate people. As long as it wasn’t raining, Laughton figured people went outside and used the lake out back whenever possible.
“I don’t know if I can go in there,” Laughton said.
Kir considered this, then understood. “It smells,” he said.
“Damn right it does.”
“I’ll get him.” The robot put his hand to the door.
Laughton put a hand on his partner’s shoulder. “Wait. The asshole can take his medicine. He won’t last long in there.”
They took up posts on either side of the door, their backs to the wall, as though they were bodyguards waiting for someone of importance to do his business. As they stood there, Laughton began to realize that many of what he had taken to be people when they came in were actually robots, recent models, no plastic old-timers, no anthropomorphized toasters. These were designer models with wheels, jewel-encrusted faces devoid of simul-skin, even one with electric jet thrusters, an enhancement so expensive that Laughton had never seen one in person. That same robot had three memory sticks plugged into exposed ports on the top of his head. Laughton just hoped he didn’t fly when he was fucked up, although a metal piece of shit crashing out here wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.
When he passed, Kir said, “Can you believe this shit?”
“Looks like the preserve might be the best thing that’s ever happened out here. At least somebody’s profiting.”
“Metal pieces of shit,” Kir said.
Laughton laughed at his partner echoing his own thoughts.
“Hey, I can say that,” Kir said. “I’m a metal piece of shit too.”
“Bleeding heart,” Laughton said.
Kir held a finger up to his lips. His sensors picked up the movement just before the bathroom door opened. The wave of skank made Laughton gag and his eyes water. How the fuck had Jones stayed in there that long? Kir threw his arm across Jones’s shoulder before the dealer even had a chance to register they’d been waiting for him.
“How did you stay in there for five minutes?” Laughton said.
Jones looked at Kir, who still had him in a tight grip as though he was a distant uncle overjoyed at seeing his little nephew all grown up. “You think you could ease up a little?”
Kir just grinned.
The dealer’s eyes darted around them. He was still anxious as anything. Maybe not as agitated, but still panicked. That didn’t make sense. If he’d hauled ass out here, wouldn’t it be because it was a safe haven? Was he scared of Laughton, of the cops?
Two women went by with their arms around each other. The heavy skin under one of their eyes made her human. Laughton couldn’t get a handle on what this place was.
Jones addressed Laughton. “You saw what was happening on the TV. The robots are coming.”
“It seems you picked a place where the robots already are.”
Jones’s eyes wandered away. “Yeah, well I didn’t realize K-B had let all of this mess in.”
“K-B?” Laughton said. “Did you fucking say K-B?” Kawnac-B had been the number one supplier of human recreational drugs in Baltimore: heroin, mylos, juice, cocaine, all the ways people liked to waste their lives. It was lucrative, but Kawnac-B didn’t do it for the money. He liked the power it gave him over the addicts. They were like his slaves, and whenever one of them turned up dead, which was often, the case ended up on Laughton and Kir’s desk. It was always ruled an overdose—the addicts did it to themselves, didn’t they?—but Laughton remained convinced that Kawnac-B took a more active role in helping those overdoses along.
“If you take an animal’s food source, it’s going to follow the food,” Kir said.
“But these are robots here.”
“Nah, there’re more humans,” Jones said.
“What the hell!” Laughton said.
“How many bodies we seen that pointed to Kawnac-B?” Kir said.
Laughton scoffed, falling into the routine. “Once a week.”
“Twenty-seven,” Kir said. “You see, I know that exactly.”
Jones was trying to hold his head as far from the robot as possible.