City of Night

error, without boredom.
    Surgically fitted with a feeding tube, catheterized to eliminate the need for bathroom breaks, he might prove to be an economical alternative to some factory robots currently on the assembly lines. His food could be nutritional pablum costing a dollar a day. He would receive no pay, no vacation, no medical benefits. He would not be affected by power surges.
    When he wore out, he would merely be terminated. A new worker would be plugged into the line.
    Victor remained convinced that eventually such machines of meat would prove to be far superior to much current factory equipment. Assembly-line robots are complex and expensive to produce. Flesh is cheap.
    Randal Six had been sufficiently agoraphobic that he had not been able to leave his quarters voluntarily. He was terrified to cross the threshold.
    When Victor needed Randal for an experiment, attendants brought him to the lab on a gurney.
    “He can’t possibly have left on his own,” Victor said. “Besides, he can’t have gotten out of the building without tripping an alarm. He’s here somewhere. Direct security personnel to review yesterday’s video from his room and from all the primary hallways.”
    “Yes, Mr. Helios,” said Annunciata.
    Considering the high degree of verbal interaction she maintained with Victor, Annunciata might have appeared, to an outsider, to be a manifestation of an artificial machine intelligence. Although she did interface through a computer, her cognitive function in fact occurred in an organic New Race brain that was maintained in a hermetically sealed tank of nutrient solution in the networking room, where she was wired into the building’s data-processing system.
    Victor envisioned a day when the world would be inhabited only by the New Race living in thousands of dormitories, each of which would be monitored and served by a disembodied brain like Annunciata.
    “Meanwhile,” Victor said, “I’ll be studying Harker’s cadaver. Locate Ripley and tell him that I will need his assistance in the dissection room.”
    “Yes, Mr. Helios. Helios.”
    About to take another bite of the cookie, he hesitated. “Why did you do that, Annunciata?”
    “Do what, sir?”
    “You repeated my name unnecessarily.”
    On the monitor, her smooth brow furrowed with puzzlement. “Did I, sir?”
    “Yes, you did.”
    “I was not aware of doing so, Mr. Helios. Helios.”
    “You just did it again.”
    “Sir, are you sure?”
    “That is an impertinent question, Annunciata.”
    She looked appropriately chastised. “I’m sorry, sir.”
    “Analyze your systems,” Victor directed. “Perhaps there is an imbalance in you nutrient supply.”
     
     
     

Chapter 5
     
    Jack Rogers, the medical examiner, maintained an office in which an avalanche of books, files, and macabre memorabilia might at any moment bury an unwary visitor.
    This reception lounge, however, was more in line with the public perception of a morgue. Minimalist decor. Sterile surfaces. The air-conditioning was set to CHILL.
    Jack’s secretary, Winona Harmony, ruled this outer domain with cool efficiency. When Carson and Michael entered, the top of Winona’s desk was bare—no photographs, no mementos—except for a folder of Jack’s notes, from which she was typing official autopsy reports.
    A plump, warm-hearted black woman of about fifty-five, Winona seemed out of place in this barren space.
    Carson suspected that stuffed into Winona’s desk drawers were family photos, Beanie Babies, beribboned sachets, small pillows with feel-good mottoes in elaborate needlepoint, and other items that she enjoyed but that she found inappropriate for display in a morgue reception lounge.
    “Looka here,” said Winona when they came through the door. “If it isn’t the pride of Homicide.”
    “I’m here, too,” Michael said.
    “Oh, you are smooth ,” Winona told him.
    “Just realistic. She’s the detective. I’m the comic relief.”
    Winona said, “Carson, girl, how do you stand him being so smooth all day?”
    “Now and then I pistol-whip him.”
    “Probably does no good,” said Winona.
    “At least,” Carson said, “it helps keep me in shape.”
    “We’re here about a corpse,” Michael said.
    “We have a bunch,” Winona said. “Some have names, some don’t.”
    “Jonathan Harker.”
    “One of your own,” Winona noted.
    “Yes and no,” Michael said. “He had a badge like us and two ears, but after that we don’t have much in common