047 – Heart
Police Recording Y59-H5
Confidential: Chief Eyes Only
Virginia looked around cautiously as the security warning flashed on her screen. The office was empty, she had earphones plugged in and she had turned the screen away from all the cameras, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched. She shouldn’t be doing this. She didn’t have the clearance for viewing this. But Fox had given it to her. Given it and the access code. She’d been hiding it for a month to avoid suspicion, but she couldn’t wait anymore.
File Type: Automan Officer Data Log: model F0OX1
Password:_
Casting one more nervous glance around, Virginia punched in the password.
Password: * * * * *
Access Granted
View all entries?
Virginia tapped the screen.
Yes
The file opened, with a long, long scroll bar to the right of the screen. Virginia started reading the first entry.
Date of entry: 23-05-2078
1000 hours: activated
First assignment: Partner to one (1) Officer Virginia
Sex: Female
Race: Caucasian
Height: 5 feet, 4 inches
Weight: 145 lbs
Eyes: Gray
Hair: Brown
An image of her own face flashed up on Virginia’s screen. Forward, profile and a few action shots, at three-quarters view and even from slightly above her looking down. Were they really watching her so closely, or had Fox taken these pictures and filed them under this entry? Her hair was shorter in some of the pictures. They were probably Fox’s. She scrolled down.
1017 hours: sent to firing range with Officer Parkinson
Rounds fired: 53
Targets hit: 53
Virginia scrolled down to a video player and tapped the “play” button. Short clips of an arm and firearm firing, then zooming in smoothly to focus on a perfect bulls-eye. Just the good bits of the firing session, skipping over the dull parts. The entire video, probably all of the video Fox had ever taken, was somewhere on this chip. But for a summary archive, the short clips were enough. They made Fox look cooler.
There were several clips of the perfect shooting, then a reload sequence. Every movement was economical, perfect, as the blue fingers slipped another clip into the handgun. Then the camera swung around to the target again. In the swinging movement, Virginia caught a glimpse of her own face and winced. She had thought that day that she had been controlling her features well, hiding the fact that she thought she didn’t need a partner, especially not some blue Ken doll AI. But, even in the brief flash of herself on screen, she could see the astonishment and near-disgust on her face.
1145 hours: sleep mode
2103 hours: activated for 911 call
This time there was an audio file, with subtitles to clear away some of the static. The call had been made from an old pay phone, hence the static. But the caller’s desperation could be heard clearly.
- Hello, 911 dispatch.
- Please, you’ve got to help me.
- What is the problem, ma’am?
- There’s a man with a gun. He’s following me! [weeping] He shot Becca! She’s bleeding. I think she’s dead! Please, you’ve got to help me…
- Calm down, ma’am. I’m sending officers right now. Where are you?
- No! No, please! Don’t do this… No!
- [gunshot]
- [man humming]
- [dial tone]
Virginia had almost forgotten about that first call. Double homicide by a hobo who was high on something. He had though the was a cowboy in the Old West. He was humming face-off music under his breath when Virginia had pointed her gun at him. She couldn’t believe she had forgotten about her first call with Fox. He was the one who handcuffed the guy after dodging a pointblank bullet and slamming the guy’s face into a dumpster.
She scrolled down through the list of entries, a long laundry list of Fox’s entire working career. Calls, how long he had been charged at night, all the little minutiae of dates and times and what he did then. Virginia sifted through it all, remembering all that she had forgotten over the past months. She skimmed through months of archives. None of it was exciting reading. It was all stiff and mechanical. Yet another thing she had forgotten about Fox; how he used to be. She hadn’t realized how much he had changed. It had been so gradual.
Virginia stared at the screen lost in all the memories. Finally, she scrolled to the day Fox had given her the password and his memory chip.
Date of entry: 01-02-2079
0105 hours: responding to anonymous tip about possible drug dealing on Chapel Hill Street
They had found drug dealers all right. The tipper had been one of the circle’s own members. It had been a trap they had set. If it had been any other officer but Virginia and Fox to respond, they would have been okay. But Virginia and her partner had figured out a long time before that they were some of the only straight cops in the entire force. The dealers were going to take them out because they did their job correctly in cracking down on organized crime.
Beneath the time and date of the entry, there was another video player. Virginia clicked on it and a prompt popped up.
Password:_
Virginia hesitated, her finger hovering over the keypad on the screen, then punched in the code Fox had given her.
Password:* * * *
Access Granted
The video started out quietly enough. Virginia watched herself through Fox’s eyes as she laughed at something he had said. It had been a stupid joke, but hearing it form him had made it funny.
“How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?”
“I dunno, how do you?”
“You open the door and put him in.”
It wasn’t really all that funny, but she had laughed anyway. It felt good to laugh.
She was cut off by a burst of squelching from the radio.
“Car 14, this is Dispatch, come in, over.”
Fox answered.
“This is Car 14, go ahead, over.”
“We have a tip about a possible drug exchange on Chapel Hill Street. You are nearest unit. Caution is advised. No other information, over.”
The camera swung around to Virginia’s face as they looked at each other knowingly. She couldn’t see Fox’s face, but it didn’t matter. AI’s didn’t have an incredibly range of factial motion, having limited stimuli response and just plain lack of ability. All they could usually manage were extreme emotions. Fox’s face had been perfectly still apart from the slightest rising of one eyebrow. She had taught him that. Virginia’s own face was tight and drawn, with no hint of the laugh that had just been there.
“Roger that. Car 14, Officer Parkinson and unit F0OX1 responding, over and out.”
The video skipped the drive over, though again, the entire footage was probably somewhere in there. It would have just been Fox’s flawless driving, with the camera working in a periodic motion between the windshield, the rearview mirror and the side mirrors. Virginia hadn’t driven the patrol car since Fox had been assigned to her. But all the video showed was them beginning to drive and then cut to them slowing to a stop on Chapel Hill Street.
“You ready?” Virginia asked, looking out the windshield with her hand on her gun.
“You’re sure it’s Mattimeo?”
“Yeah. That’s why they didn’t give us the tip direct. They knew you’d be able to ID the voice. Or maybe there never was an actual tip.”
Fox looked out the windshield as well, taking in the empty street.
“Well, we haven’t been shot yet, so I guess we have a bit farther to go.”
Virginia sighed heavily.
“Why do we do this, Fox? Why do we do it when we know the world’s going to hell one cop at a time?”
Without taking his gaze away from the windshield, Fox replayed a sound clip of Virginia herself speaking.
“We do this job because there are people out there that need us, understand? We’re going to keep doing it even if no one will help us because we can help other people ourselves.”
Virginia snorted. Fox looked over at her. She was smiling a little.
“I was drunk then, wasn’t I?”
“A little. We were off-duty and you needed someone to drive you, so I didn’t report back. It doesn’t make it any less true.”
“It’s kind of creepy, watching my voice come out of your mouth like that.”
“Sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“Whatever you decide, I’ll be right behind you.”
Virginia looked at Fox then, her eyes hard.
“What, you’ll follow me anywhere? I’m the only thing keeping you here?”
“Yes.”
Virginia chuckled along with herself on the screen and the same haze of tears glazed her eyes. Stupid her, having an AI for a best friend. She had thought that would be safer. Less commitment that way.
Virginia tried to disguise wiping her tears away as simply tightening her ponytail.
“Great. Now I feel selfish.” She pulled her gun from its holster and checked the clip. “Come on, let’s get this over with. Make sure it’s Mattimeo, then shoot first and ask questions later. All right, let’s crash this party.”
Fox swung his gaze back to the windshield and they drove on.
Virginia watched as they met the group waiting for them, as bullets were exchanged. There were twelve of them, something she hadn’t noticed before. The number popped up on Fox’s display after they were all down on the ground. Three of them had been holding machine guns, but two hadn’t even had the chance to use them. AIs were fast.
Virginia’s ears were ringing from the gunshots, but Fox’s audio had been unaffected by them.
“Well, we showed them, didn’t we?” Virginia panted, wearing a stupid weary grin.
“Seems like it. You know now we’re going to be targeted even more.”
“Screw them. I’m quitting now. We’ll move out of state, go to some little town where ‘crap’ is a dirty word.”
“All right.”
“All right. Now split up. Let’s make sure we cleaned this mess up here and then we’ll deliver our pink slips.”
So they did. Virginia watched herself disappear down an alley, while Fox scanned the surrounding buildings. Virginia knew how this ended up, but she didn’t know how exactly it had happened.
The first spray of bullets, all armor-piercing, hit him square in the face. One of his cameras was taken out. Depth perception was gone, but picture quality otherwise was fine. But his motion control was hit and his left arm went still as he wobbled in circles. The second spray of bullets tore up the battery in his chest. He looked down at the gaping holes and the acid leaking from the shattered casing.
Virginia heard the gunshots. Fox looked up to see her running towards him, firing her gun blindly in the direction of the shooter as she came. Fox saw as the heat signature of the figure, lost in the dark otherwise, appeared on top of the building above them, coming up from behind a barrier to return fire. He watched as a spattering of warm blew out form the figure’s head from a lucky shot by Virginia and then the figure dropped back down behind the barrier, lost to Fox’s heat vision.
“You got him,” Fox told Virginia. His voice was drawn out and labored as the battery struggled to make the circuits connect.
“Fox…” Virginia dropped to her knees beside him as he sank slowly to the ground.
“Mind the acid.”
“Damn it, Fox, we have to save you. You can’t die like this.”
“Die? I’m a machine, Virginia.”
“So?”
“It’s not’ dying’. It’s ‘shutting down’.”
“What’s the difference? Damn it, Fox, what can I do?”
Virginia was crying? Her face was red and blotchy, and her nose was running, even if her voice didn’t waver.
“Nothing about this body.”
“We’ll get you another one.”
“How are you going to do that? The force wants me exterminated. They’re not going to hand you another model.”
“I don’t know how, I just will.”
“I want you to have my memory chip. Password is E 5 @ 3 N.”
“I’ll transplant it.”
“You can’t, Virginia. We’re designed so that you can’t do that.”
Fox’s voice was increasingly garbled now. His eyes had shut down completely.
“Fox?”
“Quit. Go to ‘crap’ town. Remember, crap.”
“Fox?”
“Crap. Remember.”
“I’ll remember, all right? Just don’t die.”
“Can’t help it. Love you. Bye.”
Then the recording ended. But the entry wasn’t finished.
0151 hours: deactivated due to damage
0512 hours: memory chip removed
Virginia scrolled to the end.
Date of entry: 04-02-2079
2207 hours: archives accessed
2449 hours: “crap” file accessed
“Crap” had been the password for the locked video. Fox was still in there somewhere, still taking in things, thought he couldn’t act on any of it. Maybe he wasn’t in there at all, maybe it was just the memory chip continuing to record and Fox had nothing to do with it. How was she supposed to know? He was a damn robot.
‘Love you.’
A damn robot with a heart. She had to do something for him. She hadn’t handed in her badge yet in the hope the station computer would yield something, but no such luck. And she was in definite danger now, after having survived a planned hit.
She ejected the disk and slipped it into the cardholder lanyard around her neck. Laying her carefully composed letter of resignation on the desk, she slipped on a civilian jacket. Then she walked out the door to the nearest bus station. Time to find a “crap” town.
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A/N: So this is obviously a format intensive page. I went through it a few times, having to change a lot of things several times, so if you catch anything that looks wonky, please point it out. YWS didn't like my format from Word too much.
I must say, this is one of my favorite "Mutts" to date, but I'm not sure if others will feel the same closeness to it that I do (not being the writers and all). Do you feel for these characters at all? Was their plight believable, or did you feel nothing and were wondering where all of the angst came in since there was so little development. Please let me know... I want this one to be good.
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