The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez Read Free Book Online

"And be careful this time. You still owe me for that vest."
    "Thanks."
    He waved his hands as if to brush aside the gratitude. "And Mack, whatever you've gotten involved in, be careful."
    "It's nothing to worry about, Jung."
    "Do me a favor and be careful regardless."
    I found a nice gray trench coat that was a little too big for the gorilla, but a perfect fit for me. I was taller than Jung, so it didn't fall lower than mid-thigh, but since I wasn't looking for something to keep away the chill, I didn't care. I found an old bowler that hadn't been worn in a while, apparent from the dust covering it. Clothing served no functional purpose for most robots, especially ones as weatherproof as myself, but automated citizens tended to drape themselves in one or two pieces of wardrobe if only to further distinguish themselves—beyond the complimentary red paint job that all bots received—from the other drones and autos inhabiting the city.
    There was more to it, of course. Automatons with sophisticated-enough programming started to absorb affectations from their environment. Fully aware bots were even more susceptible to such quirks. I was no different. Whether it was some subconscious motivational directive driving me toward full assimilation or a bug in my behavioral software I couldn't say. Nor did I care. But I felt better putting something on, so the stuff wasn't quite as unnecessary as logic would have dictated.
    That same odd bit of preening didn't apply to my smudged chassis. I could've stopped for a wash and wax, but I didn't care enough to waste the time. I got a few strange looks on my trip uptown, but I ignored them.

    Crime was a dirty public secret in Empire. No one talked about it, and if you listened to the Learned Council, you'd think Empire was a shining utopia of order and decency. True, there were plenty of districts where a citizen could live in complete safety, where police were omnipresent, reliable, and completely effective, where no one ever got mugged or slapped around or murdered. Then there was the rest of the city. In a town where technology was supposed to be the answer to all society's ills, there were plenty of ills to go around.
    Empire was too big. No matter how many cameras the city might post, no matter how many rotorcars patrolled the skies, no matter how much honest effort was put forth to drive the rats into the light, there was always another dark alley for them to crawl into. There always would be. It was human nature. I wasn't even human, and I understood that.
    The hub of Empire's law enforcement was a gleaming dome of blue steel, a small city in itself, called the Think Tank. There were hundreds of precincts scattered throughout the districts, and they were fine for keeping thieves and muggers in line. But if you wanted anything done, you had to go the Tank. The doors were open to the public, but you had to go through an extremely sophisticated scanner.
    I stepped through the sensor arch and was immediately tagged a threat to public safety. A chime went off: nothing too obnoxious, but loud enough to catch your attention. Two gun-drones, heavy blasters on treads, rolled forward and trained their potent arsenal on me. There was the forcefield, too, invisible to human eyes, but registering as a soft green haze to my opticals, erected around me. For good measure, the gravity plate flooring increased its pull, and I had to crank my power up to 71 percent to keep standing.
    The cop working door duty glanced up from his magazine. "Hey, Mack."

    "Do we need to do this every time, Parker?"
    "System's automated. You know the drill."
    I opened a port in my chest and a drone walked over and installed a small blinking box. With one of these on, a robot wasn't much of a threat to anyone. The city had considered installing one into me permanently, or at least for the term of my probation. Only a protest by the Mutant Protection Agency, fearing a precedent of limiting personal freedom in the guise of