Julia

The lenses on Julia’s headset snapped down with a click and instantly erased the naked concrete and colorless walls of the reeducation camp. The cold remained. The headset couldn’t warm her bones or fill her stomach but for now she felt the kick of the intravenous stimulant begin to warm her veins. The ULEverse™ metaverse materialized around her while her adrenal mix jacked her up and the whole world was hers. Fight or flight, baby.

She glanced up and gestured slightly with her head to spin through the hovering carousel. Each virtual node represented a live window — and within each window was a square of color and motion nested within a solid green frame. All green. Everything checked out. The transfer from the night caretaker had been smooth. Damn, jinxed myself, she thought and winced.  Way too early for that thought. Way, way too early.

To prove her right a squeal came from her headset audio. A single frame pulsed an outraged orange. She grabbed the edge and swiped to enter the scene. The ulebot was locked up awkwardly with a spatula in one hand and the other reaching downward. She felt cold chemicals slither along her spinal column as she synched to the bot’s sensory ports. Taste — a mouthful of metal and plastic. Smell — smoke (not good). Touch — pressure on her leg. Sight — bacon in a frying pan on the cusp of combustion. Hearing — a rush of sounds dominated by a piercing wail. She glanced down and saw a toddler clamped around her leg. The burner on max, glowing a bright red as the grease smoldered. She was lucky she caught the orange warning. This could go red real fast.

The grease smoke first. Gotta get that burner off now. Click. She shoved the frying pan to the back and stabbed on the range hood fan. Next, she crouched and scooped up the toddler.

“Good morning little man, what are you up to this morning?” That trademark ulebot smile sat on her lips as she deposited him in his high chair. The AI should have done that first goddammit.

A woman bustled into the kitchen. Mom. Her head tilted to clasp on an earring. She bent over and kissed the toddler’s head. “Omigod, were you bothering our Ule again?” She glanced over at the bot. “Sorry about that Ule,” she shrugged out a what-can-you-do look and continued to fiddle with her earrings.

“It was no problem ma’am, I am here to serve,” Julia said (or made the bot say). She turned back to the bacon. It didn’t look so bad after all, thank God.  She decoupled the bot link and her own senses returned one by one as she returned to the metaverse. Another emergency averted. The bot’s automated systems could handle the rest. She zoomed back out and spun the carousel, in search of other anomalies that might need her attention. The AI system was pretty good, but it didn’t handle exceptions very well (pretty much never). That’s where the caretakers came in.

Customers who purchased the Full Autonomy option were told/sold that ulebots were all controlled by a link back to the ULE Corporation mainframe. The marketing material said this massive computer was the world’s first and only truly thinking machine, and because of this, the ulebots could do anything a person could do and more. Like most tech company AI marketing speak, this was a complete fabrication. No one knew— or wanted to know— that armies of caretakers like Julia kept the whole thing going.

The carousel continued to rotate silently overhead. She was glad she caught the bacon before it burned. ULE Corporation was fanatical about customer service and a customer could log a complaint at any time, just by telling the ulebot. Julia was held responsible for all complaints during her shift, whether she was actively assisting the bot or not. And that usually meant losing a few of her credits.

For now Julia’s bot farm seemed under control once again. She jumped in and out of the frames, synching her senses with the bots as they performed their duties. Night walking a Pomeranian in Shinjuku, hearing rain patter on the wet sidewalk that reflected the tall restaurant signs. Squeezing avocados in the produce section of a waterfront mall in Hamburg, hearing sounds of a grand piano tinkle down the escalator into the grocery store.  She could see the world through the eyes of her bots, but come nightfall her head alway fell to the same grungy, cold pillow — her stomach always half full of the same tasteless gruel as every other night.

A piercing cacophony obliterated her daydreams  — definitely not the orange alert this time. She swiped the carousel to surface a virulent throbbing red frame. Frame Five, a housecleaner bot. She grabbed the edge and dove in. Massive. Disorientation. She didn’t recognize a thing. So much red. Where was she? Wait. A bathroom. The bot had opened the bathroom door and locked up, the scene far beyond the capabilities of the neural net loaded on ULE Corporation’s mainframe.

The bathtub was full of blood. Blood dripped from the ceiling. Blood dripped from the walls. The towels were red. The floor was red. Everything was red. An overwhelming urge to tear herself free from the headset gripped her. She took three deep breaths and willed herself under control.

As the shock of the overwhelming gore receded she forced herself to look at the details. Her senses dialed down the overload from the wall of red. She saw the body face up in the bathtub. A naked man. She pulled up the bot’s profile and matched its owner to the body. Just great. A match.

She began to trigger the emergency escalation as required whenever a bot-involved injury (or death) occurred. Hang on. Escalation alone guaranteed a disciplinary panel. She almost had enough behavior credits banked to buy herself out and a penalty could cost her five years. Probably more. Five move years in this “reeducation” camp? Unthinkable. Her brain threatened to deadlock like the bot’s priority queue at the hot stove that morning.

An incoming message alert forced her to unfreeze. She called it up —the night caretaker’s address scrolled overhead while the note unfurled:

Julia — Frame Five was violent with the bot again and it locked up. When I jumped in to assist they tripped a methamphetamine infusion. SOP to make me go along with the customer. Then, when he was done, he registered a complaint. His bot was too passive!??! Two years worth of creds gone in two seconds!! I just lost control. Please don’t turn me in. Please, please help!!!

Fuck. What had the idiot done? Julia shuddered — five more years — by now those words had become a repeat intruder tailored in to her interior monologue. She backed out of the bathroom and examined the bot. Spotless. A self-cleaning routine must have triggered after the night caretaker switched out. Later on the bot began the usual automated morning routine — only to lock up when it entered the bathroom.

She activated the suite’s lockdown and searched the closets. She dragged a pair of suitcases to the bathroom. Five more years. Her bot was a domestic model but it still came factory equipped with high performance synthetic polymer muscles and a titanium skeleton. She set to work. That ulebot smile never wavered as she detached the victim’s limbs one by one and carefully wrapped the grisly chunks with towels to soak up the blood. Then she stuffed the bloody parcels into the suitcases. Finally she stacked the suitcases in the hall and returned the bot to the bloody bathroom. Five more years. She leaned against the door, feeling the hard, flat surface on her back through her uplink. She queued up a bathroom sterilization cycle and another self-cleaning routine for the ulebot then dropped back out to her carousel.

She found a couple of pulsing orange frames that she rushed to handle. Mostly minor stuff but time consuming all the same. Once they were green, she returned to Frame Five and found the bot in the kitchen. Cleaning. The apartment was spotless but Julia was nervous about the bathroom. Five more years. She opened the door. Immaculate. Just gotta ditch the suitcases. She called the elevator and trundled them inside. The doors opened at the parking garage level and she summoned the victim’s car. She tapped into the ULE Corporation surveillance network while the bot’s onboard AI loaded the suitcases. ULE Corporation provided surveillance services not only for the building but for this entire sector of the city. She planned a route designed to minimize camera exposure. When the suitcases were loaded she started the route and the car pulled out of the garage. Five more years.

Twenty minutes later the self-driving car wheezed and rolled to a stop as strobing orange warning lights illuminated the polypropylene dash. The navigation system announced with a high strung synthetic twang that it could take her no farther. She flipped to manual. A block of unfinished condominiums and exposed smart-road entrails demarcated the high-water mark of gentrification— the edge of the Nogo district. No cameras. No surveillance. No problem.

The car jolted along a deserted stretch of river until she figured she had gone far enough. Using the bot’s mechanical strength, she heaved the suitcases far out into the river where they bobbed and then sank — thanks to a few random chunks of concrete from a nearby heap of rubble from the last age stuffed alongside the grisly contents. When the suitcases were out of sight and the last bubbles had slowly vanished downstream she guided the car back to the apartment and brought the bot upstairs.

She deleted the red alerts from last night and filled the log with a few fabricated orange incidents. When she was done she allowed herself to enjoy a brief afterglow of relief before she jumped back out to her carousel. Only one orange frame. She smiled and dove in. She knew how to work the system. Fuck five more years.

Milton

Detective Milton stood in front of the apartment building and took in the stats as they scrolled down the lens of his augmented reality glasses. Crime — zero. Resident’s education — mostly graduate or higher. Average income — through the roof. He whistled at the rent numbers. Ludicrous. Yeah, it was upscale alright. An upgrade for his eyes from the scenery along the waterfront where the divers continued their search.

So far they had found one intact suitcase at the bottom of the river along the Nogo District. A second had torn open and the contents had scattered across the bottom or possibly floated out to sea. He heard someone had hooked a hand from a fishing pier at the estuary.  The remains were incomplete so far but a DNA match was easy enough. The victim was one of the well-heeled residents of this apartment.

He rode the elevator up. He caught something in the investigation feed and froze the scroll. The victim owned a ulebot. Well, well, this would be a first. The tech team would want to treat it like a mobile computer with legs. Could be that’s all it was.

He stepped out of the elevator and knocked. The ulebot answered. A female model with short black hair. He remembered reading all the ULE Corp bots were the same size. Everything was the same under the polymer skin. External appearance could be configured before purchase but really, the bot was the bot.

“Good afternoon Detective. Please come in.” A hand extended towards him as if on rails. She knew who he was. And why not? They were all on the grid after all. Everyone was.

They shook hands. The bot’s chest moved — a simulated breath — and their eyes met. The hand was warm and the muscles contracted in the forearm as they shook. Impressive yes. Human? Somehow not even close. The real trick that made all the billions was the AI — the strong AI. ULE Corporation had achieved the impossible— a machine that could really think and reason like a human. Some doubted it was even possible, but they claimed to have done it, and it was this technology that powered the truly autonomous ulebots and their equally impressive sales figures.

She stepped aside to allow him to enter. The first thing he noticed was how clean everything was. A dedicated domestic bot explained that he supposed. He took a look around the apartment. Bathroom, clean. Bedroom, clean. He looked in the kitchen. Nothing much. The fridge was pretty much empty. The victim was single and ate out most nights.

He said he needed to ask her a few questions and they sat opposite at the kitchen table. The bot looked approximately human but no one would be fooled into thinking she (it?) was a real person.  Her voice was clear enough but the tone was flat, with no natural variation. Her conversation skills were perfect and she seemed to understand everything he was saying, but somehow he still felt like he was talking to his car’s navigation system. He scrolled through apps on his glasses until he surfaced the recording app and a small light began to flash on the frame beside his eye.

“When did you see the victim last?”

“Six days ago.”

Her voice was flat and the synthetic cadence was sometimes hard to follow as she described the morning. The victim had breakfast and left for work. She tidied up and spent the rest of the day on the recharge station until he returned in the evening. He had several drinks and seemed agitated. He watched television for the rest of the night but also took several phone calls. Milton already had access to the records. After the last call, he became angry and threw a few glasses on the floor. The most interesting part was that he kicked the bot several times.

Milton tried to wrap his head around this — the ulebot was just a machine that happened to have rubber skin and look vaguely human. So why did this seem so wrong, except to show that the victim had a bad temper? No different than if he had smashed a cell phone or punched a wall. Right?

“What happened after you cleaned up the mess?”

“He ordered me into the bedroom. Twenty minutes later I returned to the charging station.”

“Uh, did you say bedroom?”

Of course she did. Milton massaged his temples. Christ. Whoever thought this was a world worth building? “And this was frequent?” Fairly. Well, ok then. “So you went back to the charging station. Anything else?”

Ule froze. He waved his hand in front of her eyes. Nothing. And just like that she was back. The gap had only lasted a few seconds.

“He was violent in the bedroom,” she said. Her voice now slow, somehow thinner. Haunted.

“Violent? You mean during sex?”

There was a long, eerie pause and the silence cocooning the insulated apartment wormed into his ear. A few minutes ago she had seemed a cartoonish stereotype of a robot. Now somehow her body was — alive? Her voice quavered. Her fingers entwined and her thumbs chased each other in an endless circle.

He searched the electronic eyes, “you’re just a machine?” he said. Stupid question.

“Obviously I am only a machine.” Bitterness tinged her voice. He was familiar with bitterness. Her voice was a deep cold current — colder than any algorithm could ever be.

“Ok, then what happened? Back to the charging station. Anything else?”

That was the last time she saw him. She assumed he went to work early when he failed to appear for breakfast. Then she began her usual cleaning routine, which led to the discovery of the body. He asked her to send her logs. When she replied the flat voice was back.

“Of course Detective.”

At the door she shook his hand as he imagined a hand-shaking machine might do.

Later on, Milton was reading through her statement. True to her word, the full account of the past five days had arrived — and told him nothing more than he already knew. Meanwhile, other bad news —Metro’s surveillance network turned up nothing of interest anywhere near the apartment building that night. Naturally.

However, this was not to say he had nothing. The team handling the body had confirmed time of death at midnight. The dismemberment had happened two hours later. This confirmed their earlier estimates but it was the computer forensics team who had the biggest news — the apartment’s security system showed the victim’s car left the garage at two-thirty AM and returned a little after three. Also of interest was that the car’s trip logs had been wiped clean and no trace of its beacon turned up on the Navigation Authority during the time is was outside the garage.

Wherever it went, it should have turned up somewhere on the grid. It would be extraordinary for the vehicle to have avoided the cameras by random chance. It seemed pretty clear to Milton that the victim left the apartment inside his own suitcases in the back of his own car that night. But who was driving? And who had wiped the car’s logs?

He called up the recording from the interview with Ule and advanced along until he found the strange pauses. What happened when she gapped? Whatever it was, it creeped him out. He had sensed a personality shift — a new presence somehow. Had she been human he would have been sure he was talking to a different person. Was the robot defective? Perhaps covering up an accident? And anyway, none of his ideas explained the dismemberment and dumping of the body.

He needed something more and the car trip was the key. Supposing the victim was killed in his apartment and someone drove his body to the Nogo District to dump in the river, then Ule would have been deactivated or otherwise taken out of the picture and the driver would have to know a route that could avoid the surveillance.

Milton mulled the facts for a moment. There were other surveillance systems. The Nogo District was a tough area mostly overrun by organized crime and crypto-anarchists. More than a few places he knew ran their own hardware, all off the grid and difficult for law enforcement to trace or even access if they seized the equipment.

He sat in his cruiser and scanned a map of the Navigation Authority’s grid. He then drew a route that minimized exposure to the camera system and also led to the site where the divers were searching. He dropped a pin on a location by the river and let the car do the driving while he settled back in his seat. The windows darkened to block out the sun and he took off his glasses, hoping to catch a few minutes of sleep but his racing mind refused to cooperate and took him on a wild ride, even as the car smoothly navigated the snarled uptown traffic.

He finally nodded off just as the car lurched to a stop (naturally) and he was forced to drive the last few blocks through the Nogo district. When he at last reached his destination he opened the door and stretched his arms and legs, reaching upwards towards the sky to crack his back. He felt the meagre warmth of the thin-gruel daylight while he looked up at the warped and sun-bleached plastic sign — American Jewelry and Loans. The windows were hazed over owing to the dust on the inside and street grime on the outside. He squinted into the dimly lit interior, it was just possible to make out a few recognizable forms — video game consoles from another age, a few kitchen appliances and an electric guitar, all looming like shipwrecked treasures, preserved for centuries by the cold undersea murk.

He opened the door. No chime. Some ancient blues crackled from a speaker — warm vinyl spinning on a turntable, sound sluicing through dust covered vacuum tubes that would scorch your fingers if you touched them. The dusty dead eyes of the legacy security cameras peered down from the corners. That was ok. You never saw the new ones either and they were just as dead.

“John Milton,” a gravel voice dragged itself across the surface of his eardrum, “How long has it been?” The old man sat on a stool behind the counter. Like the windows, the counter glass was hazy and it too concealed treasures — a few gaudy rings, tattered trading cards, stopped watches.

“Lester, you’re still alive?” he said.

“Were you expecting someone else?”

Lester was old now, Milton reflected, like the dusty shrouded objects that lined his shelves.

Milton indicated the cameras, “Got any of those pointing at the street?” The old man nodded and flipped an antique flatscreen around so that he could see. Milton gave him the time and he clacked the parameters into a jaundiced keyboard. The exterior view pointed out from above the pawn shop door straight across the river. The picture was surprisingly clear — not bad especially considering the video was taken at night.

They advanced through the timeline and paused to check out the cars. There were only a few and Milton immediately disregarded most of them until, damn, there it was — a match. Lester fiddle with the controls, adjusting the frames to get the best view of the driver. Milton put his hands on the counter and whistled. No mistake. Ule.

But how? Was she infected with some kind of malware? Or maybe she was being controlled somehow? Whatever the case, his next avenue of investigation was pretty clear. He needed more pressure on ULE Corporation. He was going to have to take a deep dive into those dark waters. Somehow this bot was, at the very least, abetting a murder.

Lester transferred the data to Milton’s glasses. The blues record had finished but the crackling was still audible as the needle bounced inside the lane of the smooth inner track. Milton headed for the door. A fist pump definitely wasn’t his style but he did one anyway. Finally some direction. He reached out for the door just as it swung open. His heart leapt for his throat and hammered in his chest. Ule’s resting face — a cold plastic mask  — was staring at him. He watched as if in a dream as tiny servos activated, hoisting the cheeks up and the lips aloft into that perfect ulebot smile.

Her hand struck out. Too fast to track. She snatched the glasses from his face and crushed the lenses, the smile frozen in place. “Why couldn’t you stay away?” she asked. The crumpled frames and ruptured display cells fell from her hand to the ragged linoleum.

Julia

The night caretaker was dead. They came for him in the cafeteria. Two security guards marched in and stood behind his chair. She was online in the ULEVerse when it happened but she knew the routine. The guards walk between the rows. All conversations instantly snuffs out. The only sound is the clop clop of their boot heels on the unforgiving concrete. Every eye tracks their march. They come to a stop behind the guilty party. Sometimes their victim may cry out, sometimes they whimper. Sometimes they are silent. She wasn’t there but she would bet the night caretaker was a whimperer.

Then they leave the hall, their prey in tow. An eerie quiet remains, standing beside the vacant place at the dining table. Waiting. Soon the shot rings out. Deep in her headset, flipping through her carousel, she heard the sound. The sound was muffled, but she knew.

She would be next if they found out. Oh god, how had it come to this? How had she let this happen? Fear reached into her chest and clamped a clammy hand around her heart. The logs were clean, she was sure of that. It had to be this detective snooping around. She knew she had not handled the crime scene very cleanly. How could she be expected to? All this was new to her. Even so, she should have been more careful. She should have anticipated the investigative skills of the police.

The fact that the night caretaker was dead meant that her bosses were aware of the detective and the investigation. She had to be extremely careful. Any hint, the faintest trace, of her involvement, would lead them to her.

She dove into Frame Five’s ulebot. The apartment was empty, the forensics team long gone. The bot had continued to do what domestic bots do and scrubbed the place top to bottom. When Julia looked around she found it almost impossible to believe that the bathroom had been awash in blood just two days ago, or that she had tried to help the night caretaker. She should have just turned him in.

She called up the city map and found the detective’s cruiser by the river in the Nogo District. This was very, very bad. What was he doing? She ran to the elevator and stabbed the button. Come on. Come on. The door opened and she ran to the car. She allowed the automated system to take over, guiding the car out of the garage and to the river. She had no good choices. She selected the fastest route. She would would have to worry about the surveillance grid later. For now she had to get to that pawn shop while Milton was still there. If she didn’t, there would be a bullet in her head before sundown.

She drummed her fingers on the dash until, at last, she was there. She leapt from the car and shot across the road. There he was. Through the window. Getting ready to leave. She yanked open the door. He was shocked to see her, that was pretty clear.

She crushed his glasses while he backed away, holding his hands between them. As if he could ward her off. Cruisers were already dispatched — she could see them on the grid. She had maybe three minutes. Just enough time to finish off the detective and the shopkeeper, then destroy all the data. She already had a story, patched together en route while drumming her fingers on the car’s dash. This bot’s frame had gone red. Emergency alert. When she dove in, she discovered the detective had abducted the unit — probably due to suspicions regarding the night caretaker. If she hadn’t intervened, he could have unraveled the whole ulebot façade. If she could sell her bosses at the camp, she might even get some bonus creds.

“I know you’re a human, controlling that bot,” he said, his firearm now ready.

Had he figured it out?

“You talk Detective,” she stalked relentlessly towards him,  “but you know nothing.”

“Wait,” he backed away, “we’ll give you amnesty.”

She was fast. He was tired. He managed a single shot before she smashed the gun from his grasp. She felt the slap of the bullet tearing through her vinyl cheek.

“Amnesty?” she sneered, “there are hundreds of us — prisoners in these camps. You have no power here.”

The shopkeeper popped up from behind the counter, gun in hand. He pumped three bullets into the bot’s torso. This only helped her story. She cornered Milton and seized his arm.

“I promise we can help,” he said.

She drew him close and closed the other hand around his throat. “I don’t expect you to forgive me. Just know I have no other choice.”

She squeezed and his face bulged. Veins popped out on his forehead. He was finished. She just had to get the shopkeeper before the police arrived.

Something pulled her away. A hand on her shoulder. Her real shoulder. The came a flood of realization, bitter realization — and she knew what came next. She released her grip on Milton’s throat. “John, they found me.”

“Ule,” he forced her name through his damaged larynx.

“My name is Julia,” she whispered. Too late. She was yanked to her feet, her headset ripped from her face. Now that death was near she wanted to tell him everything but all she could do was watch his dumbfounded face in the headset’s tiny lenses as it fell to the concrete.

In the American Jewelry and Loans pawnshop in the Nogo District Detective John Milton watched a ulebot reboot. “How pleasant to see you, Detective Milton. I am here to serve,” the bot said, that ulebot smile torn and ragged but firmly in place.

Thousands of miles away a hundred caretakers briefly paused their meal and lifted their heads as a single gunshot rang out across the abandoned scars of the northern Alberta oil fields and a cold concrete room sat quiet.

Geoff Marshall lives in Aurora, Canada with his family (humans, cats, dog) and writes software for a living. He has a BA in English Literature from Carleton University. Recently his work has been selected for publication by MoonPark Review and Academy of the Heart and Mind.