Fatboy Read online

  Fatboy

  by Graham Dillistone

  Copyright 2015 Graham Dillistone

  Smashwords Edition

  Chapter One

  Sara left the apartment early. Sitting in her old Ford, as it negotiated the slush in the streets, she tried to work on her catalogue, but she was tense and impatient and she kept glancing out of the window. Her building, when it came into view, looked normal, although she was annoyed that the auto-plow hadn’t cleared the new snow from her parking lot. She told her car to wait in the street until the lot was cleared and then picked her way cautiously through the snow to the door of her building.

  She glanced to her right. Snow was lying in drifts on the unfenced skating rink and the frozen canal. The grey cloud was breaking up, morning light streaking through, and she could see down to the Baptist church on the edge of the ghetto. Traffic on the cross road to downtown was light. Nothing unusual. She shivered and moved on into the covered porch. She was beginning to regret her lazy decision not to check things out in the night, when the wireless link with her building had gone down. Foster would have worried, but what the hell; sometimes her business came first.

  The steel-rimmed doors showed no sign of damage. They said, “Good morning, Sara,” as though nothing was wrong. She told them to wait half an hour before clearing and opening to the public. Inside, the lights came on and she was in her familiar world. She glanced first to her right where her most prized exhibit, a 300-year-old wedding dress that had once belonged to an East European royal, took pride of place. It was still there, untouched. There was little else in her customer area: plain wooden floor, a big display screen to her left, and in front of her, a long counter on which clothes could be spread out and examined.

  Her eye caught by something on the counter, she stopped still in shock, succumbed to a moment of nausea, and then moved quickly forward. Her five security mice were lined up in a neat row, camouflage inactive, sensors flaccid, their grey little bodies obviously lifeless. She picked one up and opened its memory compartment. The plug-in cube was gone. She half threw it back on the counter, a grunt of frustration escaping her. None of them was going to be telling her what went on last night.

  She went quickly around the counter and tapped on the door to the warehouse, now scared as well as angry. Shit, her mice might be a little out of date, but nothing, no-one, not even a feline predator robot, could catch all five mice and disable them like that. That just didn’t happen. So what the hell was going on?

  The door opened and she bunched her fists and went through, wishing that she was wearing an athletic shoe instead of heels. “Full lights,” she said, and the high-ceilinged space came abruptly to life. She braced herself, staring round, half expecting carnage, disaster, but the rows of dresses, the antique denim at the back, the storage boxes, all looked untouched. Sensing cold air over to her left, she tracked around the dress racks to the big doors leading to the loading bay. They looked solid, but when she touched them, they moved.

  She squatted down and studied the locks. She felt the cold air on her face immediately. The thick steel bolts were mangled and cut, as though both heat and force had been applied, and there were a couple of small access holes in the door. She closed her eyes and cursed. Who the hell would do this? She opened her eyes and looked again at the rows of dresses, but could still see no sign of anything missing. Theft didn’t make sense anyway. Everything in here was unique, and hence identifiable. She didn’t need the wireless alarms on every item, like the big stores used. If someone broke in, the mice would get video and DNA, and that would be enough for the cops to run them down; assuming they could be bothered.

  She jumped up suddenly and went down to the far corner of the warehouse. What she saw made her stop, hands on hips, mouth half open. A narrow trench, about six feet long, and three feet deep at the far end, had been dug in the concrete floor. Jesus Christ, she thought, these guys were thorough. She saw now how they had got to her mice, even when they had taken cover in their defensive burrow. But they must have brought some kind of digging equipment with them, to get through the reinforced concrete floor, and she still didn’t see how they had caught the mice, because her mice were far too quick for humans.

  She stood up, heart rate fast, her mouth tightening in frustration. Noticing the partitioned corner of the warehouse which she used for photographing her stock, she headed that way, her mind searching for reference points, reasons, guidance. She put her head through the open doorway, not expecting anything here to have attracted the attention of the intruders. Apart from the special lighting, there were just two robot mannequins, female in shape, with generic mixed-race faces, one blonde, one dark.

  The dark one, which was wearing a hand-woven African costume in strong colors, was spread out on the floor, limbs rigid, still holding a pose. By a strange quirk, the blonde one, dressed only in a petticoat, seemed to be staring at its fellow model with a look of surprise and alarm, even though it would normally change its facial expression only when told to do so.

  “Get up, Hilda,” Sara said, but the mannequin on the floor didn’t move. Only then did she notice that its African costume was singed and blackened at a point near the middle of its chest. More angry than shocked, she moved closer and bent down: the burned area was about ten centimeters across, and the fibers of the costume crumbled to dust when she poked at them. The artificial skin beneath was also burnt. A flame or beam weapon of some kind?

  “And you can stop looking like that,” she said irritably to the other mannequin, as she stood up and headed back towards her sales area. As she came through the door she saw a tiny red and black figure hanging on a thread a couple of feet above the counter. She gave a small cry of shock. That hadn’t been there when she first came into the building. She took a cautious pace forwards and studied it, then raised her eyes and tried to see how it had deployed, and from where. The ceiling was high and she could make out nothing but the thread.

  The tiny homunculus suddenly spoke: “Say hello, say hello, say hello.”

  She jumped and throttled back a scream. The thing had also moved its arms, and she saw that its costume was like a black minstrel from the Jim Crow era.

  “Say hello, say hello, say hello.”

  Her throat was dry, but she managed, at last, “Hello.”

  “Hey friend,” the thing said in a thin but clear voice, waving its arms, “Worried about security? Now you know you should be! Send seven hundred bucks to the charity on your phone before Thursday, and get peace of mind. It’s cheap! And don’t get any smart ideas about going to the cops.”

  The toy-like thing flared white for a couple of seconds and disappeared into dust. A spark ran up the thread like a fuse. At almost the same moment her phone beeped. Half-mesmerized, she turned her wrist and pressed the button to deploy the screen.

  A message. She stared at it for a moment, feeling slow and stupid. A human rights charity in Nigeria? Soliciting donations? How the hell had that got through the filters?

  Her whole body tightened up suddenly, as the meaning of everything became clear: this was an extortion demand. She stayed rigid for a few seconds, blinking and staring at the screen. Then she moved a pace to her left and sank slowly down onto the office chair she kept behind the counter, allowing the screen to fold back into her wrist strap.

  These bastards, whoever they are, jammed my wireless link, broke in and killed my mice, attacked a mannequin, all as a warning, a demonstration. They think I’m a defenseless woman, and that I’ll just... pay up! Boy, are they going to get a...

  She let her breath out and dropped her head. She pulled her lips back into a grimace. She tried again: boy, are they going to get a surprise.

  She stared fixedly in front of her for a few minutes, remembering the thin tone
s of the homunculus, then her need to do something erupted again and she pushed herself to her feet. She walked around the counter a couple of times, clenching her fists. She should call Dennis to get the locks fixed, because right now the doors in the alley were blowing in the wind, and anyone could walk straight in. And after that, she needed coffee badly.

  But instead of calling Dennis, she suddenly went back through the warehouse and out of the side doors onto the loading platform. She looked up and down the alley and examined the platform itself. The warmth from the buildings had melted most of the snow. She couldn’t see any signs of footprints or tire tracks. She studied the locks and the cut bolts, but she didn’t have enough mechanical knowledge to know how they had been destroyed.

  The insurance would pay, she thought, but an insurance claim would mean a police report. Was she going to tell the police? In defiance of the message?

  On her way back through the warehouse, she called Dennis. He said he’d organize the locksmith and call by later in the day. Back in the shop, she sent a message to the deli in the next block and ordered a blueberry muffin as well as the coffee. The robot messenger appeared a couple of minutes later. She hated to admit it, but it was comforting to have a dumb but cheerful robot restoring a bit of normality to the situation. She retreated behind the counter with her breakfast and sat down, jaw set, eyes sharp. Come on, Sara, deal with it.

  No way was she going to be able to tell Foster. Not, at least, about the mannequin getting blasted. Nor, of course, about the message. He’d go nuts. He counted on her to keep everything running smoothly: this business of hers, their joint dealings with the outside world, all the material stuff; so he could get on with his academic work. It was her edge. Her function. So she’d acknowledge the basic fact of the break-in, just to maintain some minimum level of honest dealing... and then lie. It’s nothing, honey, just some sad sack burglar, who is probably sore as hell at finding the place full of useless dresses.

  She took a swig of coffee and opened her screen and studied the message again. Her anger was growing, as the initial shock receded. She was absolutely not giving in to this crap. That was a slippery slope which led to more demands, for increasing amounts of money. Thursday was two days away, so she had some time to think.

  Number one on the list of things to think about: where the hell was this extortion racket coming from?

  The obvious answer was the ghetto-like enclave a few blocks down the road and across the canal. Her anger focused for a moment on the miserable failures of city, state, and federal levels of government, which had allowed the welfare-dependent population over there to grow and grow into an underclass of violent misfits: drug dealers, gang lords, rapists, thieves, all of them a menace to the adjoining neighborhoods. And instead of proper policing they used custodial robots to restrain them, which she had heard just bottled up their frustrations and made things worse.

  She hated and feared the miseries of these wasted lives: her mother had come from a poor background, and although she had escaped into middle class comfort, she had filled her daughter’s head with stories of conniving cheaters and dehumanized losers. Sara had grown up with a vivid sense of the destructive contagion of poverty: and made sure she stayed away from it. She had never even driven through the ghetto areas, fearing that the misery would impregnate her like a disease.

  As the ghetto expanded and drew closer over the years, she had many times thought about relocating her warehouse, but the economics seemed to get less and less favorable. The rent here was low, and it was all she could afford. So now, she thought bitterly, closing her screen and putting her bunched fists on the counter, she was going to be driven out by stunts like this. Which would mean closing her business. Or not. It was up to her. She wasn’t weak. She had to think and plan and put up a fight.

  She finished her muffin and took another drink of coffee. Was it possible that this extortion had been going on secretly for some time, everyone too scared to talk? If so, maybe she was going to have to assemble a network of victims, so that they could take action together.

  She stood up and threw her breakfast packaging in the recycler. In a couple of minutes her front doors would signal that she was open for business. She only got a dozen customers a day, but everyone was entitled to her best attention. Somehow she had to get her thoughts and fears in order and carry on as normal.

  Chapter Two

  Kris “KR” Rawlings kicked the door closed behind him and pulled his heavy leather coat tight around his muscular frame. There was fog over the canal, and in the grey morning light the patched-up houses opposite looked like prison camps in Siberia. What the hell was he doing back in the hood after working so hard to get into college? Because he was a family boy, and dumb, and, hey, because of the opportunities, ha, ha, ha...

  He gave a twisted smile and stepped through the slush, thinking about how those opportunities were maybe about to bite him in the ass. What he should have done was stay in college and get a degree in designer drug production, extortion, the illegal trade in military robots, and corruption in civic society. Oh, and people management. Come to think of it, people management was easy. A punch in the face usually did the trick.

  He turned a corner and walked up a gentle slope for a couple of blocks. At the crossroads, a two-room shack masquerading as a convenience store stood quarantined by fencing and a broad swathe of tarmac. The walls were covered in graffiti and weathered advertising; the display window showed mostly soda and cereal; and out of sight, with access from the roadway, there was a customer service hatch.

  He went through the door beside the display window and was hit by a blast of heat. He glanced quickly round the store. He liked to see everything in place, properly presented. Turnover of groceries was important, covering basic costs. The business was also a way of laundering drug sales, which meant paying taxes, but middle class customers, he’d found, wanted to drive in, pay in legal electronic money, and go.

  He moved on to the counter. Tank was there, obsessively going over stuff on his screen, a kind of comfort ritual, KR had decided. Daley was lounging on a chair tipped back against the wall near the entrance to the basement, looking tough.

  “Where we at, guys,” KR said. “Any trouble?”

  “Not yet,” Tank said, barely looking up. He had a red and green C-spy clinging to the top of his arm. KR could remember him before his conviction, when he’d been a normal kid with a reckless attitude. The custodial robot had driven him in on himself, made him morose. Smartass kids, and some birdbrained older folks, would tease him and insult him. After trying to respond a few times, and getting taken down by the C-spy, he’d changed, learned to hold it in.

  The useful side of it, in a drugs operation, was that the C-spy stopped him ripping off the product. KR had a couple of free-roam, C-spy wearing, convicts on the payroll. But they weren’t much good in conflict situations, so he’d brought in Daley.

  “Sales?” he said.

  “Better,” Tank said.

  “How much?”

  Tank drew breath, looked up at last. “Ten per cent. Maybe a little more.”

  Daley pushed forward and brought his chair level. “What the fuck you do to them?” he said.

  “The Popeyes? Nothing much. Just took away their machine.”

  “How the hell you done that? Fatboy?”

  KR went around the counter and put his hand on Daley’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s you and me check the basement.” He unlocked the door to the basement and went down the stairs. He heard Daley behind him.

  Tank was probably cool, of course. They’d checked a dozen times on wireless transmissions from the C-spy, and never got a murmur. And you never saw the damn things in court. All the same, it seemed like guys with C-spies were not quite with you all the way. It was like they’d half turned into robots themselves.

  The machine standing in the middle of the concrete floor was like a luxury barbecue, with trays each side, and flaps for feedstock, a screen and control panel high u
p on the bulbous front. Customers who’d found out what suited them, what suited their DNA, would send in an order, and this machine would synthesize it. It was big and heavy and expensive, and he still owed the guys in New Orleans. He looked at and shook his head in muted amazement.

  “You know what Fatboy done to those guys?” he said to Daley. “First it gasses their store. Little targeted missiles. Harmless stuff, but it knocks out the guys inside it. Then it goes in, breaks open this kind of concrete storeroom they got, grabs their machine, which is pretty much like this one, and scuttles out with it on its back. Runs half a mile with it over rough ground, covered in snow, in the middle of the night, and throws into the canal. Took it maybe two minutes. And it’s back in our basement in another three. You cannot imagine the power of this thing.”

  Daley gave an appreciative nod of the head. “You know what, though? The Popeyes are going to figure they need one too.”

  “Sure they are, but no way are they going to get one. You know how much I put into this? The guys I had to pay off? Who in the Popeyes is going to be able to go that route? I had to deal with Nigeria, for Christ’s sake. I bet we’re the only gang, the only non-government body, with a P32 class military robot in the entire state.”

  “What do you reckon they’ll do?”

  “The Popeyes? If they’ve got a smidgeon of common sense, which they fucking don’t, they’ll sit tight for a bit and quake in their boots.”

  “They got to do something, KR. You hurt their pride.”

  “So, they’ll do something stupid, and we’ll hit them again. And again. Until they get the fucking message. Meanwhile, though, you’re right. We need to stay alert.”

  The thing was, KR thought as he walked back down the slope, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched; things had a way of escalating. If it gets to the point of killing people, the cops march in, and everyone gets C-spies, and we’re totally fucked.