Marlene crinkled her eyebrows at the word “squashed.” Then she shook strings of long bangs away from her eyes, and gave in.
“Fine,” she said. “I’ll come in at six and make sure everything is set up. That should give me enough time to make it to my appointment after.”
“You could cancel it,” Elliott said, but Marlene was already stepping away.
“Anyway,” he said, shaking his head. “Where was I?”
“You were telling me what you do at PrydeTek.”
“No, I wasn’t,” he answered back, fast. “I don’t work for PrydeTek. Eric was using me in a consulting role at first. I came in to help him—more big-picture. But I needed to have a more direct hand in product design again. You can have all the brilliant ideas in the world, but if they don’t answer a direct human need, it’s all worthless.”
“Okay, I’m sorry,” I said. “You’re with one of his subsidiaries. That’s right. What do you do?”
“We are implementing PrydeTek’s technology in a revolutionary way,” he said. “It’s a line of adult products. But very sophisticated.”
“What kind?” I balanced between playing dumb and trying not to look offended or embarrassed.
“PrydeWare,” he said, leaning closer to me, “offers the ultimate AI solution for busy men looking for real romantic interactions and serious relationships. We bring our clients’ dreams to reality.”
“So, some kind of dating platform—one that uses AI to make better matches?” I stepped backward by an inch.
“No,” he said, more than making up the distance I’d just put between us. “The men have the choice of the aesthetics. The women adapt to become the perfect match.”
“You make women.”
“No,” he said, grinning. “We make something better. Imagine your dream man or woman. Imagine you could hand-pick every feature.”
“Like a customized woman—a doll?”
“Think bigger,” he said. “These are fully functional, next-generation robotic companions who can talk to you, learn your preferences. They can interact with you on every level. I know you’re just thinking sex, but it’s more than that. A woman—or man—who can’t emote, that’s a doll. This is someone who can experience feelings like pleasure and joy with you. It’s as close to the real thing as you can get, but completely customized and adaptable to your personality.”
“And you can shut them off when you feel like it.”
“It’s really unbelievable,” he said, breezing past my comment. “If you’re interested, I can show you the microfactory where we are making history.”
As he handed me his business card, I spotted a familiar face, one I was surprised—and relieved—to see.
Chapter 14
“Detective Davies,” I said. “It’s nice to see you again.”
Mostly, it was nice to see someone I felt I could trust, even if I hardly knew him. And I’d have taken any excuse to wriggle away from Elliott.
I wondered for a second whether he’d recognize me.
“Hey, Lana.” He set down a plate of hummus and vegetables and shook my hand. “Likewise. What brings you here?”
“I was just about to ask you the same thing. You just hanging out? A drink after work?”
“Nah, still on the clock,” he said. “And I’m not sure how I’d feel about an elderflower martini anyway.”
There’s that grin again. He had just a hint of a dimple in each cheek—and an honest face. That might have been the best thing.
But he’s married.
Still, part of me was glad I’d taken a half hour to change at my apartment.
“Yeah, I’m happy with simple vodka and tonic, with lime, of course,” I said. “You’re working? Here?”
He nodded.
“About the murders.”
He smiled.
Me, too.
“I was just talking to someone who worked with Eric Blake,” I said, tipping my head toward Elliott, who was thumbing through his phone. “He’s part of a bizarre company, a subsidiary of PrydeTek.”
Davies nodded knowingly.
“PrydeWare.”
“You’ve heard about it?” I asked.
“Unfortunately,” he answered. “And that guy, he’s a real—”
“Piece of work.” I finished his sentence.
“I was going to say POS, but sure.”
“That, too,” I said. “I was asking him about what they do and how it fits into PrydeTek. Learning a lot about Eric Blake in the process. Do you know what PrydeWare does?”
“Yes, I do. And Lana, you should be careful talking to those guys.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Are you guys looking at them? Did the murder victims use, um, products from PrydeWare?”
“Lana.” He leaned close to me. “You know I can’t tell you, during an open investigation.”
I nodded, taken off guard by his sudden closeness.
“I mean that, though,” he said.
“What?”
“Be careful,” he said, handing me his card. “You have a question, you ask me. Don’t get yourself into a bad situation. Don’t trust those guys, not for a second.”
“But you don’t answer most of my questions.”
I was joking, but it was also true.
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “I make exceptions for Kat here and there. I’m on good terms with the paper.”
“Well, I appreciate that,” I said, looking down at his card. “I’ll hang on to this.”
“Please do,” he said. “And let me know if you need any help getting used to the city. I might not know where to find the best vodka tonic, but I can tell you where to find the best pizza in the North End.”
I laughed.
“You’re not up on the best bars?”
“I don’t go out that much,” he said. “A night off usually means a night with the boys. But I do know my way around good Italian food.”
He paused for a second and then continued.
“I also happen to have a night off this Saturday, if you’re interested in my expertise.”
Hell, yes, I would be—if you weren’t married.
“Thank you, but Kat’s taking me out Saturday.”
That wasn’t a total lie, I hoped, even if was more like takeout and unpacking while I talk to her on the phone. We had a lot of ground to cover.
I turned away from Davies—and caught something unnerving. Or thought I did.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elliott holding his phone—upright and deliberately. Like he was snapping a photo, from directly behind me.
What the hell?
Chapter 15
From outside, the factory appeared fairly nondescript, just another number—211—imprinted on a set of glass doors at the end of a hallway, part of a sparsely populated warehouse-turned-industrial-park. Inside the front office, nothing said PrydeWare. The reception area was a single chair by a door and a rounded metal desk that housed an industrious receptionist, squinting at her computer.
The young woman, who stood respectfully when I opened the door, had the air of a hopeful summer intern. With honey-blond hair pinned in a neat French twist and a tailored black skirt suit that hugged a slender, girlish frame, she looked overdressed for her dimly lit surroundings. The clock behind the intern said 5:30 p.m., but she looked like a lone worker in an already abandoned workplace.
She changed from poised to perplexed when I told her why I had come.
“But you’re not on the visitor list.” She peered through cat-eye glasses while scrolling through something on her screen, clicked at her computer and then shook her head again.
“Oh, I spoke with Elliott earlier today and he said I could stop by today or tomorrow,” I explained. “Is he still in?”
“Okay, I understand,” she said, smiling at me cautiously. “He’s here and I’ll go ask him about it. Please, just wait a moment.”
She nodded in my direction and walked away, hugging a tablet to her chest. She ha
d only been gone a second when I heard Elliott raise his voice and a clacking sound, like the tablet hitting the floor.
“Yes, I did tell you about her,” he snarled, adding an exaggerated sigh. “No, not a set appointment but a possibility. You have to keep track of those, too.”
The woman returned, staring at the floor.
“You can follow me, please. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s really no problem,” I answered, walking behind her down the hallway to a large corner office on the left. The metal furnishings were minimal—a desk, two chairs, and a long, bare table. Behind the desk, Marlene was seated, ticking off times from a schedule, and Elliott, dressed in all gray, was wiping the gel-slicked sides of his ponytailed hair and pacing before a wide window view of a brick wall. The intern turned and walked away, but Elliott wouldn’t let it go.
“I still need to take care of this,” he growled to Marlene.
“Welcome, Lana,” he said. “I’ll be right with you. Can you tell me, was our receptionist polite?”
“Elliott, really,” Marlene pleaded. “It’s her second day. She’s trying.”
I spoke to the dark flash of Elliott as he passed: “She was just fine, very nice.”
“I think we can do better.” He was gone, with the slam of the door.
“Tough boss,” I said to Marlene.
“Just a perfectionist,” she said. She seemed like she’d tried to make herself look small in her chair. “I’ve learned how to deal with him over the years.”
“Years?” I asked. “So you made the move to Boston with him?”
“More with the technology he’s working on than with him,” she said. “I wanted to see it through.”
“I thought it was PrydeTek technology?”
“Well, it is,” she answered. “But it’s more using their technology with innovations he’s been developing for his entire career.”
“The dolls?”
“He hates when people call them that.” She looked uneasily toward the door.
“Thanks for the tip.” I meant that. I wasn’t sure how to interpret Elliott and had learned from years of reporting that secretaries and assistants are the sources you want to befriend. They are the gatekeepers, and they usually know everything.
“This is all a little over my head,” I said. “I want to make sure I get the details right. Any way I could take you for coffee sometime?”
Marlene put one hand over the top of her loose floral blouse.
“Me?”
“Sure,” I said. “You know this as well as anyone but can probably help me understand it, without the jargon.”
She fidgeted with her glasses and glanced at the door again.
“There’s a little coffee shop a couple blocks away. I go there after work, when I can get out on time.”
As I jotted the name down, Elliott burst through the doorway.
“Ready, Lana? Marlene, I’m wrapping up soon. You can go if we’re all set for tomorrow.”
“Don’t forget your call at six with Ted.” Marlene handed him a cell phone from his desk.
Elliott didn’t respond, but tucked the phone in a blazer pocket and walked me down a corridor that paralleled the rear wall of the building. I followed his rigid ponytail and cool saunter until he stopped at a doorway to our right. Hands clasped, he looked at me and cleared his throat, like he needed to prepare me.
“Now, the idea in robotics, traditionally, has been to design a more advanced robot than the last, which only allows for incremental improvements,” he said. “Even though it may not seem like it when someone comes out with a breakthrough, innovation actually happens at a somewhat predictable pace—one new idea leading to the next in a connected way, all building on the previous ideas, like steps.”
He turned to the door. “Just be careful. Poor design here. The switch is at the bottom landing.”
He creaked the door open and I followed a few steps behind, wary and feeling my way against a cold cement wall on one side and metal railing on the other to a basement floor, where Elliott switched on a set of lights, one buzz after another. A paper-covered desk at the right came into view, then a back hallway and then warehouse shelves. The dull yellow glow lit something dangling from the center of the expansive entry room. I couldn’t tell what yet, but I could smell chemicals and plastic.
At the last flip, I jumped back, horrorstruck.
Bodies.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t look away. I was frozen against the basement wall. My mind said run—get the hell out, right now—but my feet wouldn’t budge. A scream suffocated at the base of my throat. My breath was gone.
They hung, motionless. Three nude women, eyes open, staring at nothing, parted lips slightly turned up in the hint of a suggestive smile. Their feet and painted toes hovered inches above the cement floor.
“It’s okay,” Elliott said, lightly amused. “They do look eerie. They don’t have the human element yet. This is just the shell. Their processors will be activated once the physical side is perfected.”
I still stood back, my mind scrambling to put reality back together—or whatever version of reality this was. A basement factory, set up to churn out small batches of uncannily human-looking robots that floated over the floor, ready for inspection. The shells, as he called them, waited to be awakened. I hoped like hell that wasn’t what was about to happen.
It was like Elliott grasped my worst fear—and wanted to poke at it.
With an arm wrapped around her hips, he unhooked one of the figures from a cord at the nape of the neck. Her torso slumped forward heavily, jet-black braids tumbling onto the floor before he put her feet down and stood the female body upright. I looked away, toward the open door above, ready to run as soon as the rest of me came out of shock.
“You don’t like her now, but the magic part is that, once we add the processors and she starts to act like you, you will like her,” he said, standing behind the doll, stroking her arms and then resting his hands on the slopes between her narrow waist and rounded hips. Her head—and expression of chilling, wild-eyed detachment—faced my direction. “It’s really okay. You’d like her.”
Like he knows anything I’d like. Bristling at his arrogance, I found my voice again.
“How do you know that?”
“Well, we see it in our beta clients. But you have already met one of our girls.” He watched me for a reaction. “What did you think?”
How the hell did he know about Sandra?
“What?”
“Dawn.” He smirked. “The receptionist.”
I wasn’t convinced that he wasn’t toying with me.
“You were defensive of her—said she was polite, despite her clear incompetence,” Elliott said. “You felt something for her, a human sentiment for something non-human.” I could tell he enjoyed screwing with me, and that pissed me off. I didn’t speak.
“Dawn’s glasses are for looks, of course,” he went on. “Secretarial—but in an alluring way. If we can get her to handle basic tasks efficiently, she’ll be a valuable asset, in many ways.”
The glasses. Maybe that was my chance at confirming some of what Sandra had said. I tried to focus back on the reason I had come.
“How do these dolls—robotic companions—see?”
“Audiovisual processing is achieved through cameras in the eyes,” he said.
“So it creates a recording?”
Elliott shook his head vehemently.
“No, no,” he said. “That could be problematic. It’s simply functional.”
Spreading her feet apart and making rough jerks at the joints, Elliott steadied the doll, whom he called Vera, to a firm standing position, drawing the long, dark braids back behind her shoulders. Then he motioned for me to follow. I’d come this far, but wished now I hadn’t come alone. I needed to get some answers for the story, and for Sandra, and get out.
Chapter 16
We moved through a maze of rooms—each dedicated to a set of body parts and
functions, Elliott explained, though he said nothing about the closed doors we passed. I wanted to push him for insights on the murdered men, but something about the basement, and the stare of the female bodies suspended from the walls, made me hesitate.
“Back to the idea of steps,” he said, switching on fluorescent lights in one room and pointing to a shelf of bald heads and then a base of metal beneath them. “Ball bearings over notched magnetic plates. Impressive design, in itself, but it’s the software architecture that goes inside that’s most stunning. What I—we—are doing is leaping ahead to the capabilities not considered possible, and building the technology to allow for, essentially, evolution of the skipped steps.”
I flipped my notebook open and sneaked a glance behind us. I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched, with so many eyes all around, and it felt grounding to have something to do with my hands.
“How do you do that? The evolution?”
“Rather than designing better robotic, emotive companions ourselves, we are creating the framework for them to evolve and adapt.” He picked up one of the heads, examined it, and set it back down. “The robots are provided rewards—if you will—for being like people, for having human feelings, and for getting people to like them. That’s what they are programmed to want most. That is the top of the steps. They have to figure out how to get there, to create their own emotion.”
I scribbled notes, and we kept walking. We passed a monitor-filled room, dedicated to programming, he said, before he locked it from the inside handle and pulled it closed.
“Last, beyond here, is the studio—for testing and development, a creative space where we get to see the beginnings and, eventually, the outcomes,” he said. “You know, we are also working on male versions of the robotic companions. If that’s what you’re into.” He waited for my response, but I wasn’t sure what he was asking. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“That’s the next step, after such a warm reception to our girls.” He filled the uncomfortable silence. “It would take some brilliant engineering, but that is what we do—the unexpected.”