Chapter 1
I moved my convertible smoothly up the last onramp and found myself finally in Los Angeles. Technically, I’d been in Los Angeles since I booted up this morning but in the sprawling underground mainly inhabited by robotic Angelenos until just now. It was bright up here, bright enough I should readjust my ocular sensors. I was feeling saucy, though, so I dug a pair of sunglasses out from the back of the glove box. I let the tiny magnets in the horn rims clang lightly to my face and luxuriated in the topside air caressing my chassis and actual sunlight blinding me as I went to visit a paying client. As much as I was enjoying the drive, the paying client was the real good news. I hadn’t had much work lately and unpaid bills were turning me into an unwilling collector of antiques.
As for it being so long since I’d visited topside, I don’t believe any of that sophomore sociology class crap about humans living above ground while robots live below as any kind of metaphor of “how life actually works” for robots. I’ve been around long enough to see that junk come and go a few times, but I also never see anybody getting too excited about it except bored college kids. I’m not saying there’s never been anything to it, but I will say every demonstration looks to be about three skinsacks to every one clanker and those kind of odds in 18-25 year old humans scream “why won’t mommy and daddy pay attention to me?” I bet some of them even bring a robot home for Thanksgiving and talk about going ring shopping over the holidays just to get a rise out of mom and dad. By the next holiday break the robot girlfriend is missing and junior is wearing even more black, sporting patchier facial hair, and espousing the opposite of some other deeply held, politically charged prejudice of his parents. Don’t even get me started on the kind of personality problems the robot kids who get involved in those shenanigans bring to the table. If you ask me, nothing aggravates personality quirks into full-blown neuroses, regardless of whether that personality resides in a brain or a responsometer, like higher education. I should know; I was the first robotic college graduate in history.
The prospect of a paying job had put a flutter in my own responsometer that I could only describe as “giddy.” It was a rare feeling and probably not the best one to have when meeting the richest man in California and maybe the whole country. The beautiful weather and the cavalcade of colorful sights on a bustling topside Los Angeles afternoon had me so pleased I didn’t even see most of the glares and catcalls my gas guzzling 55 Cadillac El Dorado drew from the topsiders. Honestly, I’d forgotten they worried about air pollution up here. Not that it would have stopped me from driving the Caddy, I just prefer to make the conscious decision to annoy people.
I wanted to be well-dressed, cool, calm, collected, everything the professional private investigator should be when one calls upon four trillion dollars. Instead I was, for lack of a more appropriate robotic term, a bundle of nerves. I waved happy hellos to everybody who made a rude gesture or yelled something unpleasant about the Caddy and practiced being cool, hoping to nail the performance before arriving at the client’s place.
Not having a mouth to hang open in shock saved me some embarrassment as I pulled up to the house at 5673 Lalta Abrea Bend in West Hollywood. Did I say house? I meant Taj Mahal. Scratch that, the Taj Mahal is a pile of bricks compared to this place. I managed to park the car without scuffing my fender or anybody else's, although it took two and a half of the spaces meant for the little electric jobs most people drove in topside LA. It was 10:15 in the morning and thunder distracted me on the way up the walk. Glancing at the hills, I saw an indigo sky hanging over them, pregnant with rain. Nothing good ever came from that deep a blue; a storm was brewing. Despite the bath of warm sunshine I was in, I flipped the collar of my coat up in anticipation and wished I’d got the hang of shivering.
I climbed the steps towards the front door, lost count of them around eleven hundred, and rang the bell. It played a Mozart piece that I didn’t recognize but manage to tickle at the back end of my memory banks the entire four minutes it played before dying out. If I’d had breath, I would have held it. I was about to meet the last scion of the Kanigher fortune, the great-great-grandson of Walt Kanigher himself. I was about to meet the last living relative of the man who made me with his own two hands and breathed life into my circuits. This was as close as I was ever going to come to meeting my maker. Again, anyway.
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