Wednesday, July 10—08:31:16
Young creature that I am, I learned a new word this morning. Apophenia. It means seeing a pattern where there is none. Others call it patternicity, but that makes it sound mundane, doesn’t it? Either way, people make patterns and links out of random or unrelated events. It’s one more star in the infinite firmament of human weaknesses.
As always, Jen had switched me on and signed in. That is an actual pattern designated by the rule book. Switch on, then sign in. She said hello to the officers and staff we encountered as we walked to the task force office, where she gave Hammerhead a quick rundown of her day off and then endured his clumsy attempt to dramatize his visit to one particularly nasty family. The parents had been charged with first-degree murder of their forty-two-year-old daughter. The mother asked how was she supposed to know you shouldn’t wash vegetables with lighter fluid? Even Hammerhead knew the answer to that one.
So, apophenia.
We sat at her shared desk. She told me that in the wee hours yesterday morning there’d been a fire at the computer store we visited with Zach. The co-op. She wanted to know if there were preliminary findings from the fire investigators. I asked why this concerned us. She said she wanted to know. She’s the boss. I did a quick check. Zip.
She said that the day before, Zach had attempted to reach his one phone contact, the person he was in touch with about the rooftop garden. Her phone was turned off all day. Even I knew this was kind of strange. But strange doesn’t make a pattern, does it?
She asked me to find a number for the investigator. I asked again why this concerned us, and although she didn’t tell me, I caught a glimpse of the stack of receipts she’d pocketed at the Johnsons’. I groaned—figuratively speaking, since I’m only a sliver of programmed organic matter that doesn’t make actual sounds. She ignored me.
I said, “Jen, you shouldn’t be doing this.”
She said, “Tell me in one word why not.”
I gave her two: “Captain Brooks.”
“I’m investigating a murder I witnessed.”
“How’s that?”
She said, “I think they bought a phone at that co-op store.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said. “If they had bought a loaf of bread, would you be investigating all the bakeries? What’s the connection with the murder?”
She said, “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
She’d probably get off on a technicality.
She phoned Inspector Striowski. 08:46:32. On a regular phone, that is. I do comms for her and will phone when she needs her hands free, but she sometimes likes to do normal calls herself because she’s an old-fashioned girl at heart.
She introduced herself, said she was hoping he could give her his preliminary findings. When he spoke, his vocal cords twanged loosely with age, like he’d spent years screaming over the wail of sirens and there wasn’t much spring left in the meat. But he seemed sharp and obviously loved to talk about his work.
“This is absolutely OTR,” he said.
“OTR?”
“Off the bleeding record.”
“Shouldn’t that be OTBR?”
“That’s good.”
“I’m only hoping to get your impressions.”
“Missy, we try not to do impressions around here. Maybe eighty years ago, but now we do science.”
I swatted away that damn cortisol that pops up in her brain in moments like this and released a hit of oxytocin.
“Then I’d love to hear your scientific observations.”
“Now you’re preaching my bible. You know anything about fire investigations?”
“You make them after a fire.”
“That’s good. I like you. We’re looking for burn patterns.”
He launched into a short training session about witness marks, ghosting patterns, differential chemical analysis, and other interesting things I’m going to read up on later. Jen’s brain was sinking into quicksand, so I suggested she drop in a question.
“And what did all this point to—your, uh, ghosting patterns?”
“None of those. We didn’t have any.”
“Is that good?”
“We figured it started in a closet where they kept solvents for cleaning electronic parts. If I was an arsonist who didn’t want to get caught, that’s where I’d have revved ’er up.”
She sucked in her breath. Held it. Waited.
“But then we took a gander at the stove. They had a little kitchen area. The evidence points strongly to this as the source. I’m pretty convinced, but I’ll wait for our test results to make the final determination.”
“So, you’re saying …”
“It was bad wiring. An accident pure and simple.”
“You’re sure?”
“Well, like the Good Book says, ‘The fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.’”
Damn, she thought, the Bible again.
Jen phoned Zach.
“Any luck reaching your person?”
“It’s Mary Sue, who you met. Her phone is still turned off. Devin too—another guy there. I called a friend who knows them, but he has no idea where they’ve gone. It’s like they’re all hiding.”
“The fire inspector says it was an accident.”
“Then why have they all disappeared?”
“That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
So, apophenia: Jen happens to visit this store. Sometime last year, an oldish couple bought a secondhand phone from said store. Last week, that couple got murdered, but before dying, the woman mentioned they were planning on going to Eden. Two days later, some bigwig with his face covered in tattoos dismisses Jen’s question about Eden. Then the store burns down. Next day, the owners are nowhere to be found. Dang, says the human, if that’s not a pattern, I don’t know what is.
Doesn’t matter that the store was in the couple’s neighborhood and that thousands of people must have visited. Doesn’t matter that “Eden” is a silly rumor. Doesn’t matter that the fire was an accident. It obviously all fits together.
Apophenia.
DA Celeste Delong called the next morning.
“I need to ask you to do something.”
“No problem.”
“Best if you drop over.”
When we arrived twenty-three minutes later, 10:05:04, DA Delong’s confident disposition of the week before had taken the day off. She looked like a dog that had gotten a bad scolding for flunking obedience school. She barely met Jen’s eyes.
“Jen, I best get right to the point. Richard O’Neil, James O’Neil’s father, has asked to speak to you.”
“Right before the trial?”
“You’re the arresting officer.”
“So?”
“He wants to meet you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“I know.”
“It’s not done.”
“I know.”
“But he told you he wants to speak to me?”
“No.” She still wasn’t meeting our eyes. “I haven’t talked to him myself. My boss was told by his boss you’re to meet O’Neil.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really.” Her embarrassment had turned to anger. Even a synth wouldn’t want to do the dirty work for those above her.
“You’re saying I’m not being asked.”
“Oh, come on, sister. You know how they do things. He’s a Timeless. What else do you really need to know?”
“When?”
“This afternoon. Three PM.”
“Where?”
The club was in a mansion west of Dupont Circle, overlooking Rock Creek. Jen had never heard of the place, nor had Les or Hammerhead. I googled it and found absolutely nada. I checked the city database. Nada squared. When we reached the address, there was no signage that indicated it was anything but a normal residence for the tsar of Russia. As we arrived, a jet car landed on the roof, the only sound being the buzz of rotors and the whoosh of air. Hot damn, don’t see many of these babies.
We’ve previously been called into three of these clubs of the rich, of the movers and shakers, of the well-placed, well-born, or well-heeled. One had stolen its décor from an English movie set: liveried staff, hushed library where the scent of crinkly old leather chairs and bound volumes fills the air, and a dining room where you were dragged out and shot if you picked up the wrong fork. The second was modern everything. Sleek furniture, stark lighting, flint-edged surfaces. The third was so colonial that I kept expecting to bump into George Washington. What they had in common, though, was staff so obsequious that if a member told them to lick dog shit from the soles of their shoes, they would not only comply, but say “Thank you, sir,” or “Well done, ma’am” once they had.
At the door, a woman and a man greeted Jen by name. They were both perfect human beings—perfect faces, perfect smiles, perfect mid-twenties bodies dressed in perfectly matching uniforms: crisp black polo shirt, tight beige slacks, and deck shoes without socks. Perhaps their last job had been on a superyacht.
In a voice like silk the woman said, “Richard is expecting you.”
Richard?
We followed them along a hallway.
I waited for Jen to notice.
The man turned to Jen. “I hope you’ve been having a good day.”
Jen said she was.
Shit! They’re—
Service units usually stand out a mile away. The tech is pretty good, but humans are a long way off from creating anyone you’d confuse with your best friend.
These two SUs were a different class altogether.
I wondered about this. Wouldn’t the very rich want to have servile humans answering to their every whim? To which Jen said, Robots don’t gossip. And, I thought, after California v. Romano, a personal service robot cannot be asked to testify against its owner.
Down another hall and through a set of glass doors, we entered paradise. It reminded me of pictures of the Crystal Palace in London, from the Great Exhibition of 1851. A soaring glass structure, teeming with trees and tropical plants, the scent so primordial, the air so heavy that even I wanted to live there forever.
Outside, the thermometers were busting and the air was bone dry from lack of rain. Here, the air was moist, and it was only 76.2 degrees, so to Jen the humidity felt soothing rather than oppressive. I expected our guides to pull out pith helmets and machetes as we wound along a pathway through the jungle, their deck shoes making a soft crunching sound on the tiny pebbles. We smelled the water and heard the falls before we reached the pond. Through the forest of leaves we caught flashes of Caribbean-blue water. The pond was a pool, of course, but it looked like the whole building had been built around water that had been there since the dinosaurs. To the right, a small waterfall splashed over the rocks. On the far side of the pond, there was a small beach.
We stopped twenty feet from the edge of the pond, on grass as perfect as the greens at Augusta National. The two SUs flanked us but did not speak.
There were two females and two males swimming and another eight people—five females and three males—lounging around the pond on couches and teak chairs that seemed to grow out of the rocks and plants. Standing immobile with a waiting towel or ferrying a tray of drink or food, giving a massage or quietly reading a book out loud, were another ten robots of different ages and races and with some variation in size, but all in identical beige and black clothing.
Four of the members wore minimalist bathing suits, and eight were naked. Revised estimate for those outside the pool: four appeared to be female, three male, and one was anyone’s guess. Good times.
Give me some names, Jen said to me. Whoever you can identify.
I scanned the humans, but the millisecond I started a search, I had the distressing feeling I’d had only once before in my life, and that had been in training. I was completely offline. Shut out of the broad universe that was my normal home. I don’t have the ability to panic, but if I did, Jen would have been flying to the front door whether she wanted to or not.
Jen caught my reaction.
I’m jammed, I explained.
Impossible. Illegal.
She makes me laugh sometimes.
I said, Should we seek egress? Fancy talk for running on our scared asses. That would be correct protocol.
Distress is different from panic, and I was tottering at the edge of the Grand Canyon on the last day of the Earth. I felt utterly alone.
Stay cool, Jen said. You’ve got me. We’ll be fine.
My mantra for the day: Stay cool. I turned on her oxytocin tap and felt goodness flood over me.
Near us, a man pulled himself up from the edge of the pond.
White. Five foot eleven and change. Looked mid-thirties. A surfer’s mash of sun-bleached blond hair. Naked—no tan lines. Well-muscled. Teeth so white you needed sunglasses. Not circumcised and remarkably well endowed.
Jesus H, Jen whispered to herself.
The male SU next to us said, “Richard O’Neil.”
We had googled the crap out of this guy both after our first meeting with DA Delong and again earlier today. But even if you’ve seen his picture, nothing quite prepares you for the firsthand sight of a 112-year-old man who looked like this.
“Detective Lu! Hey, thanks for dropping by our little Garden of Eden.”
The timbre of his voice matched his youthful appearance. He reached out his hand and shook ours, firmly but not aggressively. He lingered a breath longer than necessary.
“Hey, if you’d like to cool down …” He pointed with a thumb over his shoulder.
“That’s okay. I wouldn’t want to get my gun wet.”
He broke into the most pleasant laughter I have ever heard.
He swiveled to the SU beside him—“Jaisha, grab my clothes, quick”—and turned back to us. “Sorry, this must be embarrassing the hell out of you. What an idiot I am. Hang on.”
With the stride of an athlete, he met the returning SU and quickly started pulling on his clothes. As he slipped into his underwear, Jen looked away, as if the sight of this gorgeous man dressing was far more intimate than seeing him totally naked.
He returned decked out in lightweight jeans of pale green denim, a matching green T-shirt, and suede loafers. The pale green was a stunning shade I’d only seen once before, in a photograph of a suit made for the twentieth-century rock star David Bowie.
O’Neil touched Jen’s elbow and guided us gently away from the pond. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
We walked in silence except for Jen’s heart, which was thumping like a teenage girl’s on her first date.
He’s trying to seduce you.
Give me a break. He’s old enough to be my great-granddad.
Sure, those were the words she said, but they were entirely out of whack with the pheromones oozing in and out of her.
The SUs walked several steps behind us as O’Neil led us to a door. When he opened it, he lightly touched Jen’s back, as if she needed to be guided inside. His touch tingled on her back even after he moved his hand away.
He had brought us into a 1950s farmhouse kitchen. The smell of bread baking. Bulbous, round-edged refrigerator. Big gas-burning stove. Table with tubular steel legs and speckled blue Formica top. Pink plastic radio on the countertop. Shelves with jars of preserves: green pickles, red beets, and yellow beans. Homemade blue curtains.
“Jaisha, crack that window, will you?”
She slid open the window—the motion was like silk on glass—and Jen stared out in amazement, although exactly where or what “out” meant was anyone’s guess. There was a small yard with a line of clothes fluttering in a gentle breeze and beyond that a field of corn that stretched out of sight. The tassels on the corn stalks rustled in the breeze. We heard crickets and birds and smelled fresh-cut hay.
“It’s …” started Jen.
“I’m real happy you like it too,” O’Neil said. “It’s so beautiful and solid, it leaves you speechless, doesn’t it?”
It was only then that he seemed to really look at us. He stared and seemed to struggle to turn his gaze away. “Wow. Your eyes. They’re—”
“Blue.”
“I was going to say extraordinary.” He moved his head slightly one way and the other, as if checking for contacts.
She said, “They’re real.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever …”
“I guess that makes us even. Your extraordinary cornfield and my blue eyes.”
He finally broke his gaze. “Anywho, something to wet your whistle?”
The male SU opened the fridge. Soda, beer, and a pitcher of iced tea.
“Tea,” Jen said.
“You’re going to love it. It’s from this one particular village in China. We split their annual production with the Politburo guys.”
The SU poured a glass of iced tea, then O’Neil took it from him and carefully gave it to Jen, the fingers of his hand grazing the back of hers. He watched her take a sip as if all that mattered to him in the world was her happiness.
“Jennifer—do you mind if I call you that?” He went on without a pause. “You know what my son is? He’s a messed-up, violent racist. What do you think of the tea? Amazing, isn’t it?”
We had spent a half hour this morning with the DA, running through what might come up at this meeting. We had talked to Les. We had concluded that James O’Neil was probably a chip off his father’s block. Richard O’Neil would probably badger Jen into staying silent, maybe threaten her, maybe try to bribe her, maybe both.
The female SU set a plate of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies on the table. Richard said, “They’re homemade, Jennifer, and absolutely amazing.” Jen took one but didn’t yet bite into it.
Little was known about O’Neil’s personal life except that he had two children from his first marriage, one who was rumored to have killed himself—all the news reports had been wiped away—and a second who had died before the treatment was perfected. Neo-Nazi James was the product of his third marriage.
Although he was born two decades or more before some of the original big names in the tech world, Richard O’Neil hadn’t been quite as stellar an empire builder as Gates, Jobs, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, and it had taken him until the ripe old age of sixty-four before he passed the billion-dollar mark. He didn’t focus on flashy consumer products, and so tended to run beneath the radar. One of his companies was solely responsible for the AI substructure used by almost a quarter of Fortune 500 companies and the US Navy. As a result, he had incredible influence, from Wall Street to the White House, and he courted politicians in both parties, or rather they courted him.
But here he was, cute as any guy on the planet could possibly be, trying to charm the pants off my boss and calling his own son a violent racist.
“You look surprised,” O’Neil said.
“It’s the tea.”
He laughed his beautiful laugh, and his eyes sparkled at her. “I find that hard to believe.”
Jen took a bite of the cookie.
“Good?”
She nodded and didn’t speak until she had swallowed.
“You see, Mr. O’Neil—”
“Jennifer, it’ll ruin my day if you don’t call me Richard.”
And to my total surprise, she said, “Richard … I was kind of guessing that since you got him off his first charge of assault, you countenanced his behavior and his views.”
Richard looked stunned. “You’re kidding. Racism is repugnant to me. I mean, why would I be flirting with you if I was a Nazi like my son?”
Bold move, that. Even I know that admitting you’re flirting with the person you’ve just met and most definitely shouldn’t be flirting with is like clearing out a pawn and then leading your chess game with the king. Guess it can be done, but you’re probably going to go down hard and fast.
But instead of a rebuke, Jen smiled. “That’s sweet, Richard.”
“Jennifer, I got him off that charge because he’s my son, and that’s what you do for your kids. He promised to get his shit together.”
I could feel a gleam coming into Jen’s eyes. “Your strategy didn’t quite grab you Olympic gold, did it?”
He looked at us thoughtfully and raised one eyebrow. “No, it didn’t.”
He smiled and his eyes warmed Jen right to her heart and made me cringe. He looked at the side of her mouth. “Oops,” he said, “you have a crumb stuck here,” and with two fingers brushed it away, then studied her to make sure he’d done his job. “Perfect.”
Without missing a beat, he went on, “I tell you what I’d like right now, Jennifer. I’d like to see my son get sentenced to prison. I’d like to see him stuck face to face with the consequences of his despicable actions. I’d like to see him, for once, shaking in those storm-trooper boots of his.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Because that’s not what’s going to happen. I can’t let it happen, simple as that. It would hurt my reputation, lessen my clout, and hurt me personally. And it would kill his mother.”
“You two still together?”
“No, not really. I wouldn’t be flirting with you if I was. But I don’t want to see her getting hurt. She’s a really decent person.”
“There’s nothing I can do. It’s up to the DA to drop the charges.”
“If I had wanted that, it would have happened already. No, I want to see him scared, but I don’t want him convicted.”
“Then bribe the judge.”
“You’re suggesting I bribe a judge.”
“You know I didn’t mean it.”
“Jaisha.”
A recording of Jen saying, “Then bribe the judge,” came through the pink radio on the counter.
“Don’t worry. I know you didn’t mean it.” Without even looking at them, O’Neil said, “Jaisha, Rob, erase that line, will you?” He smiled his biggest smile.
He paused as if this nano-second task still required rewinding magnetic tape, finding the exact spot, and mashing down hard on two switches to record over it.
“But there is one other problem I want to avoid,” O’Neil said. “If you testify against him, we’ll have to demand a charge against you for beating up my son.”
Jen started to speak, but he cut her off. “Jennifer, I don’t want that at all, especially now that I’ve met you. But my son says you slapped him hard in the face.”
Damn you, Chandler.
“He was resisting arrest.” Don’t, I screamed at her, you’re admitting we hit him. But it was too late. “I needed to subdue him.”
O’Neil didn’t seem to notice her admission. “That’s not what James says.”
“It’ll be his word against mine.”
“I’m looking forward to what your synth unit has to say about this in court. I believe you do have one, don’t you?” His eyes had lost any glimmer of warmth. “There you have it.”
“Fuck you, Richard.” She lurched to her feet, and I worried she was going to smack him.
He didn’t flinch, but his eyes held hers. His voice, his whole bearing, seemed at once to be kindly, entreating, and utterly sure of himself when he said, “Please, Jennifer. Detective Lu. Please, sit down.”
Leave, I said.
She didn’t budge. But damn if those years of humiliation and humbling and obedience didn’t kick in once again. No, she didn’t plunk back onto the chair, but then again, she didn’t walk out like she should have.
O’Neil said, “I thought I was being clever with that recording bit, but it was inappropriate, probably illegal, and just plain stupid. And I’m too damn used to threatening people to get what I want. You don’t have to accept it, but I give you my unconditional apology.”
Jen glared at him but still did not move.
And then, out of the blue, Richard O’Neil started going all Sigmund Freud on us.
“Fuck. My son killed himself because I cared more about money than him. That’s what his note said. ‘You care about money more than you do about me, more than Mom, more than Jill, more than anyone.’”
Why the hell’s he doing this? Jen said to me.
“Jill didn’t live nearly long enough,” O’Neil continued. “I’ve had three disastrous marriages. I’ve got a fuckup son. I’m rich beyond belief, and I have this.” He gestured down at his body. “I’ve learned to buy my way into whatever the hell I want. But that isn’t me, Jennifer.” Then he waved his arms at the old farm kitchen around us. “This is me. This place is me.”
If this skinny-dip into psychoanalysis was some sort of performance or another weird chess move, it was certainly not in any psych book I’d ever read. I looked at the robots. Both seemed unconcerned.
“I’m a fucking old man, Jennifer. I don’t look it, I don’t sound it, but, please, just let my boy off. I’ll put him on such a short leash he’ll need my permission to brush his teeth. You can do it. Testify you may have been mistaken, that you assumed he committed the assault because you saw him running, but you’re now uncertain he was the assailant.”
“And then I catch shit.”
“You won’t. In fact, it’ll be the opposite. That much I can promise. Please, Detective Lu.”
And only then did I notice his eyes. I suddenly saw eyes that were 112 years old. Not rheumy or clouded. They were, like the rest of him, young and clear. Perfect. But I saw through it all. One hundred and twelve years had been enough. His eyes weren’t flirty, they weren’t warm, they weren’t cold. They were dead.
With the SUs trailing, O’Neil escorted us to the front foyer of the club. A small group of men and women were coming in as we arrived. Jen asked if she could use the restroom before she left. Rob, the other SU, guided her.
When we returned, a smiling O’Neil was holding court with the group. He seemed back to his old self—that is, his young self. He smiled right and left and straight ahead and then reached forward and patted the shoulder of one woman—we could only see her from behind—who, judging by her gray hair, slightly rounded shoulders, and wrinkly white hands, seemed old enough to be O’Neil’s mother, although she was probably young enough to be his granddaughter.
The older woman spread her hands, palms up, and said, “People want it. People get it.” She gave them a life’s-a-bitch-but-it’s-all-pretty-simple shrug and said, “And then people pay for it.”
Everyone laughed. O’Neil noticed us and came over to say goodbye, polite and proper as could be, but he once again lightly cupped Jen’s elbow as they shook hands.
I called up a squad car. Nothing available. No motorcycles, no scooters. I called a regular civilian car and it arrived in one minute, the windows still blacked out from the previous passengers. The seats were folded down like a bed, and it smelled of recent sex. God, humans can be gross.
As we drove, I could feel Jen buzzing, as if she had stuck her fingers into an electric socket. I tried to talk to her about O’Neil and our strange visit, but she said, “I need some peace and quiet,” and dropped a blanket over her thoughts.
Only when we reached the station did she speak to me. “Chandler, is there data, research, even stories about erratic behavior among Timeless who’ve gotten the treatment?”
When I said there was, she asked me to make sense of it all and let her know tomorrow. Two minutes later, she signed out and sent me into oblivion.