“That’s our job.”
Laughton turned the radio on, but it was more of the same ignorant, fear bullshit from before, so he turned it off. No one was calling anything real in right now.
The robot agents had taken over a conference room as their command center. An officer led the way for Laughton and Kir. The officer—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-three years old—kept glancing at Kir out of the corner of his eye. He must have figured that the robot was part of the team that had invaded headquarters, and it clearly made him nervous, his body too rigid, the muscles at the edges of his upper lip dimpling with the effort of suppressing a frown. Seeing the young man’s fear made Laughton angry: angry that the metals were there, angry that nothing ever got better.
When they opened the door to the conference room, Laughton was overwhelmed by the number of robots present, but before he could even assimilate just how many there were, the commissioner had him by the shoulder, and was pulling him back into the hall, shutting the door behind him. The commissioner took one look at Kir, and then turned his attention to Chief Laughton. They all knew each other from pre-preserve days; the commissioner knew Kir could be trusted. “Tell me you have something that’s going to help in there.”
Laughton thought about the likelihood McCardy had the antivirus, and the chance they would find him. Instead, he said, “Is there anything that could help in there?”
“Besides a lightning storm? No,” and to Kir, “Sorry.”
Kir wasn’t bothered by the suggestion that all his colleagues should be fried.
“We closed up Kawnac-B’s club out west,” Laughton said. “That’s got to count for something.”
“Let’s hope so,” the commissioner said. He suddenly looked very old. “Have you seen the news?”
“I think we’re making the news,” Laughton said.
The commissioner shook his head, pulling out his phone. “It’s not all bad,” he said, handing the phone over.
A video showed the mall in Washington. There was a large gathering of robots, some still humanoid in appearance, but many with nonbiological designs, too tall, or too small, exposed metal and plastic, synthetic hair, even hovering like a quadcopter off the ground. They were holding up signs, “Preserve the Preserve” and “Be Better Than Humans. Keep Our Promises.”
“Is this going out over Preserve news?” Laughton said.
“I don’t know. The important thing is that there’s still tremendous robot support for the preserve,” the commissioner said. “Those bots in there have to tread lightly, so let’s give them something to hold them off.” He opened the door to the conference room, and the three of them went in.
The room was the dingy room to be expected in any good police station. A ten-foot table, scarred on its surface by the graffiti of some bored officer, was too large for the room, making the space feel uncomfortably narrow and long. A mound of discarded printers, monitors, and ancient desktop computers filled one corner. The walls were dominated by several SMART Boards, one projecting a map of Charleston, another filled with dry-erase notes from some past briefing, a variety of names, dates, and locations. The bit of wall visible in the space between the boards was scuffed, gray marks all over the once-white paint.
Grace Pattermann, the sole human in the room, sat at the head of the conference table, a tablet and a phone faceup before her. Both screens flickered with movement, which the secretary ignored. Six robots stood around the table divided into pairs. Colonel Brandis was joined by another seven-foot army robot. The Mark Sysigns they’d run into at Kawnac-B’s club stood beside another four-foot-tall robot, human in appearance aside from his size, who wore a white sailor’s uniform. The final two robots, a man and a woman, wore the traditional black suits of the FBI. All sported robotic nonexpressions on their faces.
Chief Laughton felt Brandis’s eyes on him. Just being in the room with the robot made Laughton nauseous.
“Kir,” Grace Pattermann said.
Kir simply nodded as he positioned himself at the opposite end of the table, neither on the robots’ side nor the humans’.
There was an awkward delay, no one sure who had the authority to start. Of course, there was no way for Laughton to tell if the robots weren’t messaging each other silently. It was generally seen as rude to do so when two robots were in the same location, but Laughton always felt as though they were doing it anyway, having a conversation over his head like parents spelling things out in front of kids who can’t read.
The commissioner tried to take charge. “This is Chief Jesse Laughton,” he said. “He’s chief of police in Liberty, one of our western settlements. He’s heading the Smythe murder investigation.”
“We know,” Brandis said.
“We actually met last night,” Mark Sysigns jumped in, revealing some kind of interdepartmental rivalry.
“Chief Laughton, we’re eager to hear your report,” the short robot said. “We understand your record in the Human Crimes Division of the Baltimore Police Department was astounding, so we expect great progress.”
“ ‘Astounding’ seems a bit strong,” Laughton said, but Kir spoke over him, “Perhaps you’d care to introduce yourselves before you start interrogating a fellow law officer?”
“Perhaps the Department of Health and Human Services officer would like to make the introductions for us,” Brandis said. “It’s your job to be a liaison between the upper and lower orders.”
“Peoples, Colonel,” Kir said.
“I was being generous,” the colonel said.
“Comparing humans to rudimentary AIs is hardly generous.”
“You’re right,” the colonel said, and his tone made it clear that he wouldn’t even consider a human on par with the lowest-order robot.
Laughton’s face burned. He felt like a child who’d been caught doing something wrong, and was now helpless to the consequences.
Kir allowed disgust into his voice as he turned to Laughton and the commissioner. “Jesse,” he said, “this is Colonel Brandis, army, and Lieutenant Cray. At the end of the table is—”
The robot who had said they were eager for the police’s report interrupted, “Captain Sysigns,” he said, “Coast Guard.”
“Agents Asimov and Spectra, FBI,” the woman in the suit said.
There were four branches of the robot government in the room. Laughton felt sick to his stomach at such a display of power. He tried to focus on the robot protest the commissioner had just shown him, because he’d promised Betty that this was not the end of the preserve, but in this room it felt a lot like it was.
“I’ve been assisting Chief Laughton personally since yesterday,” Kir said, trying to draw everyone’s attention, to protect Laughton and the commissioner. “We helped Mark Sysigns clean up a little mess on preserve lands last night.”
“We’re data mining as we speak,” Mark Sysigns said.
“Much easier to do when you have the perps in hand,” Kir said. “Chief Laughton was rather outraged that Homeland Security is so unconcerned with upholding the legal boundaries of the preserve, and frankly I was appalled.”