EYE CANDY - Chapter 10: All’s Fair in Love and War
Especially in love.
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Classical music brought Danny back to consciousness.
He was face-down on his bed, buried in white sheets and pillows and comforter. When he lifted his head and opened his eyes, he regretted it: daylight bit into the backs of his eyes and his skull began to pound. This was why he seldom drank, and when he did it was never to excess. Well, mostly never. Last night’s football festivities at Positronic Pizza & Pub with Rory and Harley notwithstanding.
Danny clamped his eyes shut, dropped his face into the mattress, and reached out for his phone, groping blindly around his nightstand. He found it and answered by feel as he brought it to his ear. He was too asleep, and too hungover, to take a moment to wonder who might be calling at such an ungodly hour of the morning.
“What?”
It was a male voice. “Good morning to you too, precious.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Rory, dumbass.”
“Why are you calling me so early?”
“It’s eleven-thirty.”
Rory lifted his head once more and cracked one eye open. He consulted the red digits of his alarm clock: 11:30. Crap.
Rory continued, “I’d ask how you’re feeling but the fact that you’re still in bed says it all. I hope you used the autodrive on your mighty steed last night, after the herculean amount of beer you drank. Even Harley was impressed.”
Danny grunted a general acknowledgment.
“Why don’t you come by the office and we’ll grab some lunch. I’ll meet you out front around one o’clock. I still want to hear about your blind date, since we never really got a chance to talk last night during the game.”
Danny grunted once more.
“See you at one.”
~
The task of getting out of bed was surpassed only by the struggle to make it to the shower. Danny spent a good thirty minutes leaning against the wall while the water nudged him further back to life.
Slightly more coherent, he exited the shower, dressed, and made his way to the kitchen. The refrigerator door was open and Howard’s mechanical butt was poking out of it; Floyd was nowhere to be seen.
“Good morning, sir,” Howard called from inside the refrigerator.
Danny attempted to reach the carton of orange juice, but was blocked by Howard’s substantial girth. “Howard, can you come out of there, please?”
Howard backed up slowly and then stood erect. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” said Danny. “What are you doing with your head in the refrigerator?”
“Conducting an experiment, sir. According to my Owner’s Manual, my cranial structure and positronic brain can withstand temperatures well below freezing before experiencing noticeable lag in function. I was attempting to quantify this through a real-world experiment with actual temperature variation.”
“Then why not stick your head in the freezer?”
“I sought to proceed slowly, in case I experienced any ill effects due to exposure to cold. I wouldn’t want to put my head in the freezer and experience a mental freeze-out.”
“That’s a good one, Howard.” Danny reached past the robot and grabbed the carton of orange juice, then pulled a clean glass from the cupboard.
“A good one, sir?”
“Yeah. You know: mental freeze-out. Because your head would be in the freezer.” He added two scoops of raspberry-flavored vitamin-mineral powder to the orange juice, and watched it effervesce.
Howard merely looked at him, red eyes glowing. If the robot had had eyelids and eyebrows, they would’ve been all the way up to his forehead. Danny could almost hear the positrons rushing through their nano-channels as Howard computed his last sentence. There was still room for improvement when it came to robots and their comprehension of humor and sarcasm.
“Forget it, Howard. Please close the door.”
“Certainly, sir.”
“Where’s Floyd?”
“He went out, sir.”
“Didn’t say where he was going?”
“He merely said ‘out’, sir.”
“I think he’s got a secret mistress he doesn’t want anyone to know about.” Danny forced himself to chug half the orange juice concoction at once, waiting to see if it would disagree with him.
“A mistress, sir? But Master Floyd is not married. One cannot have a mistress unless–”
“Call it a secret love affair, then.”
“Intriguing. Would you care for some breakfast, sir?”
“No, thank you. I’m meeting a friend for lunch. Did the garage call about the shuttle?”
“Not yet, sir.”
“You really think it was sabotage, Howard?”
“It would seem so. But let’s hope not. Shall I forward their call to you when it comes, sir?”
The last thing Danny felt like doing was dealing with what amounted to attempted murder. If the garage found anything untoward about the shuttle, he’d have to call the police.
This led him to wonder what the objective had been:
Himself?
Candy?
Perhaps Howard?
Howard was the very first of a new line of advanced bots preparing to go into mass production. Floyd had paid a lot of money (and called in a lot of favors) to get the first one. There was more than one anti-robot activist group out there clamoring for the abolishment of all robots. And they all had clever-sounding names which disguised their true anti-robot agendas:
The National Human League, also known as NHL (this made fans of ice hockey none too pleased), which comprised most labor unions.
The Coalition for Peaceful People, or CoPP for short, which was interesting because CoPP had a reputation for hit-and-run attacks on robots found moving about the city without their owners to look after them; Danny found such attacks truly cowardly.
But the most well-organized, most well-funded, most outspoken, and thus most widely known anti-robot group was STERN: the Society Teaching Every Robot Now.
Rumor had it that Les Grossman had ties to the group, although once he’d announced his bid for the Presidency, those ties seemed to have been promptly and decisively severed.
STERN was comprised of people from all walks of life who referred to themselves as Humanists. Humanists believed that robots were an abomination, an evil work born of man’s hubris, and that they should all be destroyed and their existence and production made illegal ad infinitum—forever. And whatever robots were used to serve mankind should be simple service bots with very little artificial intelligence; nothing more than drones, really.
Danny found these STERN people to be even more nuts than the vigilantes of CoPP. Robots were machines. Yes, they had powerful processors which allowed them to communicate with people and with each other. But the very same was true of automobiles and airplanes and telephones. Yet no one seemed to be forming coalitions or activist groups calling for the destruction of any of those objects.
Robot-on-human crime was literally nonexistent. The only people who were harmed in any way were criminals who were apprehended by sanctioned robocops only after having committed a crime. Apprehension could come in the form of being physically detained, or through the use of deadly force. The former was the ideal scenario but if innocent people were in danger, such as in a hostage situation perhaps, the robocop was equipped, and legally sanctioned, to make the difficult choice of using deadly force in order to serve the public trust. Candy had a robocop in her office right now—
Candy!
Rory wanted to hear about his blind date with her. Which meant Danny had to stop daydreaming about robots and get on the road in order to make it to Santa Monica by 1:00.
Danny swigged the last of his orange juice and handed the glass to Howard. “You be the judge. If there’s something weird with the shuttle, have them call me. Otherwise we’ll talk later. I need to hurry.”
“Very good, sir.” Howard began washing the glass in the sink, turning the glass rapidly under the water while keeping his red eyes fixed on Danny. “Enjoy your lunch.”
“Thanks, buddy. And keep your head out of the freezer.” Danny headed for the garage. “At least until Floyd gets back!” If Floyd wanted to assist Howard with the refrigeration experiment, that was fine, but Danny didn’t want to be responsible for Floyd coming home and finding his one-of-a-kind robot bent over with its head in the freezer, deactivated. Repairs for such an event would surely be astronomical, were they even possible.
Danny entered the garage and found it empty. Trying not to panic, he ran to the garage door and peered through one of the windows: his convertible was there in the driveway, where he’d apparently left it.
The exertion caught up with him and his head pounded. He could feel every artery and vein in his head stretching with each blood-pumping beat of his heart. Damn Rory and his Monday night football celebrations. And the requisite pitcher after pitcher of beer.
Danny began to think about Harley as he made his way through the side door of the garage and out to his convertible. Did she really want to go flying with him? Tonight? The way his head was throbbing, he was not about to get behind the controls of anything that couldn’t pilot itself with one hundred-percent automation. And his Viper Jet did not qualify. Its autopilot was quite good, but it was designed for in-flight use only, not take-offs and landings or traffic or terrain avoidance. The fact that those tasks remained in the hands of the pilot was precisely what made flying so much fun. If Harley—
Danny rounded the corner of his garage and stopped. Something was on the windshield of his car. It appeared to be . . . a white envelope.
He walked to the driver’s side, lifted the wiper blade, and removed the envelope—which it indeed was—from the glass. There was simply a bold letter D on the front, albeit penned in a stylish cursive handwriting.
Danny carefully tore it open and peered inside: something small and black and shiny, a fabric of some kind. He removed it and held it up.
The object unfolded and he immediately recognized them: panties. Specifically, a black thong. A sexy one. As if a thong of any color could be anything but sexy.
Suddenly aware that he was standing in his driveway in broad daylight and holding a pair of panties before his eyes, he quickly lowered his hand. A cursory glance over both shoulders revealed that he was alone; no neighbors in sight.
Danny peered into the envelope and removed a slip of paper. He unfolded it carefully.
D,
I trust our next date shall be every bit as thrilling as our first two. Until then, here’s something to remember me by.
C
Danny detected a sweet, spicy scent. He brought the note to his nose and smelled it. But it didn’t seem to be the source. He smelled the envelope; also strong, yet— He looked over his shoulder again and waited for a red hatchback with four teenaged boys in it to pass by.
He brought the thong to his nose and inhaled.
He nearly keeled over for the heavenly aroma. He inhaled again and again, breathing deeply. He pressed the silky black fabric to his nose and mouth, and realized how odd he must have appeared standing there with his eyes closed, sniffing a pair of knickers.
Honestly, he didn’t much care.
Images of Candy were flooding his mind. Her long legs and blond hair and big green eyes. The way she fed him a bite of her fruit salad, and then ate from the same fork. The way he’d put his arm around her while she slept during the subway ride back from Palm Springs. The smell of her hair.
He was getting an erection.
Danny shoved the thong into his pants pocket and climbed into his car. He placed the envelope and note carefully within the center console, and fired up the engine, enjoying the roar of the motor and its dual exhaust. Both sounds were completely artificial, of course, being that his vehicle was electric. The motor and exhaust options were aftermarket add-ons, and perhaps a bit sophomoric, but Danny enjoyed them nonetheless. They made him nostalgic, though he knew not for what. That, it seemed, was the very problem with nostalgia.
Danny’s fingers danced over the navigation screen while the car’s motorized top retracted. Within seconds he was on his way to Santa Monica.
~
The cool ocean breeze greeted Danny as his car brought him onto the aptly named Ocean Avenue, and he inhaled deeply, smelling the salt in the air. Not as powerful or as intoxicating as the scented panties in his pocket, but pleasant nonetheless.
Santa Monica was a few degrees cooler than Hollywood and Danny wondered again if he ought to live here instead of there.
Green grass ran the length of Ocean Avenue, forming a long, narrow park. Beyond the park was a cliff, below which was the Pacific Coast Highway, the beach, and the vast blue ocean. In the distance was the Sport Fishing Pier and the big Ferris wheel.
Palm trees grew tall into the blue sky, towering above the smaller oak trees providing shade to the people enjoying the park: bike riders, dog walkers, roller skaters, and joggers.
People lounged on the grass, on the sand, some in the shade, others in the sun. There was a lot of bare skin; young, fit people exercising and working on their sun tans, as well as equally-fit senior citizens and retirees playing tackle football or volleyball, rollerblading.
Others were reading via their contact lenses, or simply parked in their folding chairs, watching the parade of flesh and endless stream of expensive cars glide quietly down the street. The past decade’s many exciting breakthroughs in anti-aging therapy and cancer-preventing superfoods allowed people to enjoy long periods of time under the California sun without fear or worry of its unwanted side effects. And given the mean age and activity level of those present, to say nothing of their abundant piercings and tattoos, it seemed seventy was the new forty.
Danny relished the warm sun on his face. Maybe he would move out to the beach. He could work from anywhere, after all. Such a move would put him closer to the airport, closer to his airplane. Although the once-legendary Los Angeles freeway logjam had been greatly improved (infrequent multi-car pile-ups aside, given that they occurred less than once a month), it was still a twenty- to thirty-minute trek from his Hollywood home to the Santa Monica airport.
The pleasant voice of his car’s navigation system brought his attention back to his journey. “You have arrived; Fourteen-eighty-three Ocean Avenue.”
A long white Rolls Royce glided away from the curb and Danny maneuvered quickly into the available space.
The beautiful lines of Canary Tower projected high into the sky one short block away. Danny proceeded on foot.
He crossed Broadway and found Rory waiting for him outside the long row of doors marking the entrance to Canary Tower. Rory leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest, watching the people going by. Especially, Danny noticed, two women wearing bikinis and carrying surfboards, with turned-down wetsuits covering their lower bodies. One of the women handed Rory a business card and a pen, then turned and headed down the sidewalk with her friend.
Danny stopped beside Rory. “What was that about?”
“She gave me her number.” Rory held up one of his business cards, the back of which contained hand-written digits.
“How’d you get her number?”
“Beats the shit out of me. I was just standing here, waiting for you, when they walked by. She smiled, so I smiled back. She stopped and asked if I wanted to go to a party later.”
“What did you say?”
“I said yes. Surfer girls are hot.” Rory turned and admired the two women now crossing the street.
Rory at last turned to Danny. “You hungover?”
“Yep.”
“Can you eat?”
“I think so.”
“Follow me.”
They walked two blocks to a beachfront cantina bearing a prominent sign. “The Hangover Hut?”
“Damn straight.”
Danny followed Rory into the restaurant and onto the patio. They found an empty table at the rail, where Rory promptly resumed his spectating of women in minimal clothing.
Danny picked up a menu and began to study it. “You going to look at the menu?”
“Nope. I know what I want. I come here all the time.” Rory literally turned in his chair, his mouth open, in order to watch a buxom, tanned, well-oiled-and-shiny woman in a leopard bikini stroll by, followed closely by a gleaming chrome-silver robot walking a large white husky with the telltale red eyes of a robo-dog. The scent of the woman’s coconut suntan oil filled the air.
“I suddenly need a pina colada,” said Rory. “Whaddya say? A little hair of the dog for my main man over here, the king of purple tequila?”
Danny looked up from his menu. “King of purple tequila?”
“Clearly you do not recall doing shot after shot after shot of purple tequila off of Harley’s breasts and stomach and lower back last night. Not to mention the beer.”
Danny tried to remember, tried to access his memory the way a robot might. But he drew a blank.
Rory smiled. “You don’t remember putting a shot of purple tequila between Harley’s breasts and then picking it up with just your mouth?”
Danny merely stared at Rory.
“You do not remember Harley putting a shot of purple tequila between her breasts and then bending over you and pouring it into your mouth?”
Danny’s face was a blank.
“You don’t remember everyone watching? By that point, nobody gave a shit about the game.”
Danny’s memory was as blank as his face.
“You don’t remember us dumping you in your car last night when the pub closed, and engaging the autodrive to take you home? Clearly you do not remember. Harley probably doesn’t either. We went back to her place last night but I left early this morning before she was up. She didn’t come in to work today.”
“Can she do that?”
“Sure. Her grandfather owns the company. She practically runs the joint. Someday, she will run it completely.”
“Canary Cherrolet is her grandfather?”
“On her mother’s side. Her dad was some bigwig roboticist guy back in the day. He’s dead now. But apparently he taught Harley everything he knew. She’s a party girl and a real looker, but she’s no dummy.”
A waitress in a short white skirt and a matching white bikini top approached the table. “Good afternoon, Rory.”
“Good afternoon, Sharon.”
“You boys need a drink?”
“Two pina coladas, one for me and one for my main man Danny. For lunch, I’ll have a Deep-Fried Big Kahuna Burger.” Rory smiled and added, “Because I have a big kahuna.”
“You certainly do,” said Sharon. She turned to Danny.
“I’ll have the spinach salad with salmon.”
“A salad!” Rory exclaimed. “Are you the same man who licked salt off a woman’s breasts a mere eighteen hours ago? Where are your balls? Real men eat meat. Men like John Wayne and Earnest Hemingway, and Clint Eastwood, who didn’t get to be one-hundred-and-seventeen years old by eating salad. I’m so tired of all this veggie hippie shit.”
“Anything else?” Sharon asked.
“Just the salad,” said Danny.
“Bullshit. You’re hungover because you’re massively dehydrated. You need calories.” Rory turned to Sharon. “Bring us one order of the Deep-Fried Pizza Squares, and two orders of the Deep-Fried Candy Bar Sampler for dessert. And bring Danny a basket of sweet-potato fries along with his testicles – er, I mean his salad.”
Sharon tapped a final note on her digital pad and left the table. She returned a few minutes later with the pina coladas.
“So, Rory,” she began, placing Rory’s drink on the table, “how come you never called? The invitation still stands, you know.”
“I know.”
Sharon placed Danny’s pina colada on the table. “Rory’s afraid of being with two women at the same time. He’s old fashioned that way. Isn’t it sweet?”
“It’s very sweet,” said Danny.
“So where’s Harley?” Sharon asked. “I figured she’d be with you.”
“I dunno, she wasn’t in her office this morning. But you might ask this guy, the king of the Purple Tequila.”
Sharon nodded. “I’ll bring you both another pina colada. On me.” Sharon smiled and departed.
“Cheers,” said Rory.
“Cheers.” Danny bumped his glass and they drank.
“Before we get too wasted, I have two questions for you,” said Rory. “Question one: how was your blind date the other night?”
“It was great.” Danny couldn’t help but grin. He glanced down at the small hump inside his pocket. His grin broadened into a wide smile.
“I should say so,” said Rory. “You like her?”
“I think so, yes. I think we had a connection.”
“And she likes you?”
Danny surreptitiously withdrew the black thong from his pocket. “She left these”–he let them dangle from his fingers–“in an envelope on my windshield.”
Rory’s eyes widened and he grabbed for the thong.
Danny snatched it away. He balled it up into his hand, out of sight.
“Is that . . .?” Rory pointed at midair where the thong had been.
Danny nodded.
“That must’ve been one hell of a first date.”
“Actually we had two dates. But we had shuttle trouble on the second date so we had to cut it short. But I’m fairly confident she wants to go out again.”
“Who is she? Tell me about her.”
The waitress brought their food. Rory seized his burger with both hands and took two large bites, his teeth crunching through the crispy outer shell. He poured ketchup on the sweet potato fries and pushed the basket toward Danny. “You need carbs to rehydrate.” Speaking around his mouthful of Big Kahuna, it sounded like “You deeb arbs do ee high dray.”
Danny took a long fry. “Well, she’s tall. She’s blond. She’s gorgeous. And she’s smart. And funny.”
Rory swigged more pina colada. “Nice tits?”
“They’re perfect. Not that I’ve actually seen them.”
“Yet.” Rory held up his pina colada and they toasted once more. “What does she do?”
“She’s a psychologist.”
“Uh-oh.”
“What’s uh-oh?”
“Chicks who go into mental health professions often do so because they’re trying to figure themselves out. But it also means they tend to be really wild in bed. It’s a double-edged sword.”
“She did ask if I wanted our second date to be a trip to Las Vegas to get married.”
“You just proved my point.” Rory took another huge bite of his burger. “Either it’s love at first sight because you two are fated to be together forever, because you’re soul mates, or she’s completely fuckin’ nuts. Take Harley, for example. You do remember Harley, right? The woman you met last night?”
“Yes, I remember her.”
“Harley is crazy. She rides motorcycles, does triathlons, gets up at five a.m. and goes to the gym, this morning notwithstanding, apparently. She likes to go shopping for expensive lingerie, which she then wears under her clothes to a football game. She likes guy stuff, but she’ll also throw you down and blindfold you and ride you until your dick falls off. One of her fantasies is to go skydiving naked and have sex during free-fall. She’s crazy.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
“Which brings me to the second question: what do you think of Harley?”
“I don’t really know her all that well. She seemed nice enough last night. Though I don’t remember anything after the first quarter. I know we talked about motorcycles and airplanes. She wants me to take her flying tonight. It’s a full moon and she wants to go to Catalina.”
“You going to take her up?”
“I don’t know. I said I would. I mean, I think I agreed to go up tonight. I can’t remember.”
Rory fished a business card out of his back pocket. He handed it to Danny. “Here’s her number. She made me promise that I would give it to you.”
“I don’t know if I should call her. We had a blast last night. Apparently. But that was before I found scented panties on my windshield.”
“Scented? What do they smell like? Are they dirty panties? Can I smell them?”
“No, you may not.”
“Can I buy them from you?”
“No, you may not.”
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars.”
“No.”
“Any man who refuses to accept five hundred bucks for a pair of dirty panties must be in love.”
“We’re not in love. We just met. And her panties aren’t dirty. They’re clean and lovely.”
“So what’s Miss-Clean-and-Lovely’s name?”
“Candy Calvin.”
Rory choked on his burger. He began coughing and quickly drank the last of his pina colada. Choking, he grabbed Danny’s pina colada and drank. A blob of whipped cream rested on the tip of his nose.
“You okay?”
Rory nodded vehemently. “That’s a very, uh, sexy name.”
“It is, isn’t it? God broke the mold after he made her.” Danny found Rory staring at him. “You have whipped cream on your nose.”
Rory wiped his nose clean and looked away, out at the wide stretch of sand leading to the white waves breaking silently in the distance, too far away to be audible. “You sure I can’t have those panties?”
“I’m sure.”
Rory resumed the eating of his burger, taking a small bite off one side and chewing slowly and without his former zeal.
“So what about you?” Danny asked. He forked several large bites of spinach and salmon into his mouth. “You’re the consummate bachelor. You’re young, good looking, and rich.”
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because it’s true. You can have any woman you want.” Danny gobbled several long skinny fries. “You got any irons in the fire?”
“Not really. I’ve been spending so much time at the office. I haven’t really had time to get out and date.”
“Is that because of Melinda?”
Rory didn’t respond.
“It’s natural to be gun shy.”
“You ever been divorced?”
“No.”
“Ever spent three years in a loveless marriage?”
“No.”
“Then what the hell could you possibly know about it?”
“I’m just saying it’s natural to be. . .” Danny searched for the right word. “. . . hesitant. I’ve never been married. Like you said. But I can imagine that it would be difficult to start dating again. Especially after trying so hard the way you did only to have your love not returned.”
Rory inserted a square of deep-fried pizza into his mouth.
“There must be somebody you’ve got your eye on.”
Rory’s head swiveled as a pair of girls rolled by on old-fashioned roller skates, which gave them the appearance of floating.
Rory set down his burger. “Well, there is one woman. But I’m not sure she’s interested. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s interested in somebody else.”
“You like her?”
“I can’t stop thinking about her.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Not long. But long enough.”
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever been in love.”
“But you’re in love with her.”
Rory merely shrugged and stared at the limp remains of his burger.
“You need to go after her,” said Danny. “You owe it to yourself.”
“But if I like her, but she likes this other guy, and he likes her, shouldn’t I stay out of it? Shouldn’t I keep my mouth shut? And go back to banging surfer girls?”
“How many surfer girls have you banged?”
“Zero.” Rory sat forward, his elbows on the table, his shoulders slouched.
“You gotta go after her.”
“I don’t want to get in the way. She deserves to be happy. So does the other guy. Lucky fuck.”
“Do you know him?”
Rory surveyed Danny while Danny gobbled fries.
Rory spit a morsel of food onto his plate. “No. I don’t know the guy. But from what I hear, he’s the best.”
“Then at the very least, tell her how you feel and let her decide. Honestly, what choice do you have? You can’t go the rest of your life wondering about what might have been. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that regret sucks. It’s better to have tried and failed than to never have tried at all, to spend your life wondering about what could’ve been. Nobody’s perfect, certainly not me, but in my experience it’s better to regret the things you did do than to regret the things you never did.”
Rory stared levelly at Danny, watching Danny eat fries and push large forkfuls of spinach salad into his mouth. “Maybe you’re right.”
“You know what they say: All’s fair in love and war.”
~
Danny and Rory made their way back to Canary Tower. Behind them, in the distance, the massive Ferris Wheel perched on the pier, slowly revolving.
Rory slapped at the yellow button to activate the crosswalk. He hit it again. Hard.
“Easy,” said Danny, “the machine doesn’t care how badly you want to cross the street. It has a job to do.”
“And what job is that?”
“Getting you safely across the street.”
“I don’t need a machine to tell me what to do,” said Rory.
“We could jaywalk.”
“That reminds me, Tim told me about this guy, Larry, who started working in our company. Roboticist. Graduated Cal Tech. Now he works in plastics, I think. Anyway, Larry was out one day having lunch and he ate some bad Japanese food. Tim said that Larry thought it may have been cat meat. With Teriyaki sauce. Whatever it was, it didn’t agree with poor Larry. By the time he was leaving the restaurant, bad things were happening in his bowels. Finally, he was standing here, right here, on this very corner, waiting to cross the street.
“But he had to wait for the machine to tell him when it was safe to cross. Larry didn’t want to have an embarrassing accident so he took it upon himself to cross the street at a time when he deemed it safe to do so.”
“He crossed?”
“He crossed. He got into Positronic right over there . . .” Rory pointed to the restaurant. “But he had to wait in line to get a token for the bathroom. But the line was out the door, and then he had to buy something, since the restrooms are for customers only. He didn’t have any cash because he’d spent it all on the anomalous cat meat. So he bought a pizza he didn’t want, spent something like a hundred bucks, and finally got to the bathroom. But the door was locked because it was occupied. So you know what happened?”
“What?”
“He shit himself.”
“No shit.”
“Actually, lots of shit. He had to drive home with his poopy pants staining the seat of his brand new car, a Mercedes, I think. When he got home, he burned his pants, tossed them straight into the incinerator, which his fiancée was none too happy about because those pants had been a gift from her and she’d paid something like five hundred bucks for them at some boutique on Rodeo. Then he had to have a brand new car seat installed in his Merc, because they couldn’t get the shit stain out of the upholstery. Tim said Larry said that if he’d gotten a leather interior, it would’ve been fine. But he chose the cloth interior instead. So, bam! It was something like five thousand bucks or some outrageous bullshit number for the new seat.”
“Damn.”
“And you know what the best part is?”
“What?”
“When he jaywalked across the street, the traffic surveillance cameras saw the whole thing and were able to identify him because he helped design the facial recognition software. A couple hours later he got a fine for the jaywalking and had to take more time off work and go all the way downtown to the county courthouse and stand in line for five hours in order to pay the fine.”
“How much was the fine?”
“I forget. It was something like five hundred bucks. Oh, I remember: it was five hundred and forty. That’s right. And all together, the little jaywalking foray cost him twenty-six-hundred and change.”
Danny raised his eyebrows in appreciation. Appreciation for Larry’s predicament. And disbelief. He wasn’t sure what he would do were he to be faced with such an emergency.
“Some day,” Rory continued, “machines will run the world. More so than they already do, anyway. And we won’t even realize it.”
“How could we not realize it?”
“Imagine robots so real,” Rory continued, “they’re indistinguishable from people. They could do all the shitty jobs no one wants, like cops, who always get shot at, or garbage men, who always get weird new illnesses no one’s ever heard of. Or maybe they could even be schoolteachers. We could program them to teach the right stuff, not to be biased, to be objective, so kids get a good, well-rounded education based on all the facts. Maybe robots would even make good husbands or wives, because they would never cheat. They would always be loyal. Unlike my ex.”
“You think you could love a robot?”
“If she’s indistinguishable from a real woman, what difference would it make? She’d be great in bed. She’d never get tired, she would always be in the mood. Her genitals could vibrate and do all kinds of crazy stuff a normal vagina can’t do.”
“But she wouldn’t be real. Somehow, I think something would be lacking. You’d feel a difference. There’s something in the human spirit, call it heart or soul, that a robot could never have, no matter how real it looks on the outside. On the inside, it would still be wires and circuits and whatnot. I’m sure there are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind having a gorgeous husband or wife who is perfect in every way, who is programmed to be perfect, to be faithful, to be attentive, to be loving, to have sex any time you want. But it’s still just a machine. Isn’t it?”
“At what point,” said Rory, “does artificial intelligence cross over, make that transition, and become ‘real’?”
“You should read my book.”
“It’s on my list. You coming to Tim’s for the Fourth of July gala next week?”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
“I love it when holidays fall on a weekday. It’s like free time off work. You bringing your new girl . . . Candy?”
“I haven’t asked her yet, but probably.”
“What about Harley? I think she really likes you. You still have her card?”
Danny searched his pockets and found it in his back pocket. He didn’t need to search his pockets for the gift from Candy; he knew exactly where it rested.
“Give her a call,” said Rory. “I know I said she’s crazy, but she’s a good person. You could do a lot worse. Before you run off to Vegas and marry this Candy woman, take Harley flying. I know she’d really enjoy that.”
“What about you? Your unrequited love?”
“Are you sure I can’t buy those panties from you?”
“These aren’t for sale at any price.”
“In that case, I think . . . I think I’m going to take your advice and tell her how I feel.” Rory stepped off the curb and into the street.
Just as Danny was about to call him back, with images of outrageous jaywalking citations in his mind, the crosswalk signal flicked to green, and the computerized voice chanted, “Cross now . . . Cross now . . . Cross now. . . .”
Danny felt a subtle vibration in his pocket and withdrew his phone. The screen showed an image of Howard standing in the kitchen, looking into the vidphone mounted on the wall near the refrigerator. There were no ice crystals clinging to Howard’s pewter face, so hopefully he had managed to obey the order to refrain from conducting any further potentially damaging experiments on himself. Howard’s head tilted a bit to one side while he waited for Danny to answer. Danny touched the green phone icon. “Hi, Howard.”
“Good afternoon, sir. Mr. McGherrity phoned from the garage regarding the shuttle.”
“What did they find?”
“Traces of trinitrotoluethylene polymicrosodium hydrochloride acetate.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Explosives, sir.”
“No shit?”
“No shit indeed, sir.”
Danny suppressed the urge to laugh; it was the first time he’d heard Howard use profanity. “Have you mentioned this to Floyd?”
“No, sir.”
“Do me a favor and keep it between us. For now. Until I have a chance to speak with him.”
“I will do my best, sir. But if Master Floyd questions me on the matter directly, I will be required to answer him.”
“I understand, Howard. It’s okay. Please don’t put yourself under stress. But neither should you volunteer information. Not until I can speak directly with Floyd. Please.”
“I will do my best, sir.”
“Thank you, Howard.”
“May I ask you a question, sir?”
“Of course, Howard.”
“Have you any idea who might have done this? Or why?”
Howard’s red eyes appeared a bit dimmer than usual. It could be he was worried, that his positronic flow was impeded, and his normal computational indices were requiring more power from his microfusion cell, making his eyes appear less vibrant. Or it could have been the sunlight glaring on the supposedly anti-glare screen of Danny’s phone.
Danny didn’t know how to respond. It wouldn’t do to lie to Howard; his flying skills had helped save their lives; he deserved the truth. “No, Howard, I don’t.”
“Indeed, sir.” Howard began to turn away from the vidscreen. Then he came back. “One more . . . question, sir?”
Danny nodded.
“Do you . . . still . . .” Howard was having a difficult time spitting it out. “. . . want . . . to go flying with me?”
Danny grinned. He was relieved. And touched. “Yes, Howard. I absolutely still want to go flying with you. How about today? Right now.”
“Right now, sir?”
“No time like the present.”
“What about your rule, sir? It has not been twenty-four hours between your bottle and your throttle.”
Danny laughed. “True. But I’ve got a big lunch in my belly and scented panties in my pocket. I feel great.”
“Very good, sir. I shall make sure Master Floyd has no need of my services.”
“Sounds good, Howard. I’ll pick you up at the Santa Monica subway terminal, and we’ll head to the airport together.”
“Very good, sir.”
Danny rang off.
Now what was he going to do? Perhaps he could take Howard flying, land and drop him off, and then toss Harley in the back seat and take her out to Catalina Island, thereby keeping his word to each of them.
As for Candy . . . perhaps she would wait up for him. After all, he had something which belonged to her.
His mind was suddenly reeling with the sudden and simultaneous events added to his social calendar (which was typically quiet; very quiet).
If he knew Candy at all, and he liked to think he did, or was at least beginning to, she would understand. Plus, they had the entire week upcoming during which they could spend time together. And Tim’s annual 4th of July beach-house bash was coming up. He was already looking forward to it. Particularly if he had the distinct honor and pleasure of escorting Candy to the party.
As for the explosive residue of the tri-nitro-tolu-whatever it was called, that was a bigger problem.
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