Jaeger held a flashlight in his teeth as he peered into Rudi’s empty cranium at what was left of the Neural-Interface’s wiring. He clearly wasn’t in an equitable mood, but we had work to do with this machine. It was Allen who took the initiative to remind him.
“I know this might be difficult, but could you run through the possible places it’s been in the past four days?”
Allen had tried to sound empathetic, but Jaeger would have none of it. “Difficult? Difficult is searching a two-storey house for a single termite. Trying to narrow down locations through a Cortex is like dropping a penny from five miles above the Plate into a teacup. The amount of data Rudi has collected in the last few days will be a nightmare to sift through, and because I’m the only person who knows even a fraction of what it takes to build an Automatic, you two won’t be much help.”
“Good to see your humility is on point with your intellect.” I sat down in a chair and put up one leg on an adjacent table as I tilted back. “You’ll still do it, though.”
“Of course I will. No one takes my machine without finding themselves in deep shit after. It’ll take some effort, though. The Cortex isn’t the easiest to interpret.”
“And why’s that?” I genuinely had no clue what he was talking about. But any bit of information could help.
“The Cortex detects the Automatic’s location longitudinally from the magnetism of the North Pole, reading its location east and west, but it can’t discern distances north or south. Instead, it cross-references with towers across the country which supplement those coordinates, allowing the Automatic to triangulate and receive accurate information as to its location from almost anywhere. But, if it’s outside the range of those towers, then it’s dead in the water. It would tell you it’s at seventy-seven degrees west, but its location could either be Washington, DC, or some godawful city in South America.”
“And which towers would it use as reference near here?”
“The one tower big enough to be picked up by every Automatic in the city is GE.”
I stood up and went to the door, opening it just as the sun was appearing, illuminating the street beyond the blinds. I peered at the behemoth of a building looming in the distance.
“Thankfully the Cortex is often separate from the Neural-Interface and is stored somewhere in the carapace. Bootleggers used to think they could saw off an Automatic’s head and steal the parts without being tracked. Dummköpfe.”
“Yeah, perps tried to do that to me back in ’24. Did not go well for them.” Toby chuckled to itself.
“That Cortex do anything else, Jaeger?” I might not have known much about Automatics, but since we had access to GE, I wanted to kill as many birds as I could with the stone Allen was holding.
“I’ve never tinkered with it, but as it’s powerful enough to receive signals from and broadcast to the reference towers at GE, it must do something else.”
I shut the door and walked back into the room. The workshop was silent other than the sound of Jaeger typing on the terminal. Even Toby wasn’t in the mood for talking. Maybe he’d used this incident as an excuse not to go to work today.
I took it upon myself to wander around the shop. I hadn’t gotten the best look a few days before. As far as I could tell, Jaeger wasn’t currently repairing or servicing any other Automatics; this must be a slow season for him. He’d have to sell actual goods for cash.
Allen finally piped up. “Would it be possible to connect his Cortex with me?”
Jaeger glanced up from his work. “And why on earth would I do that?”
“Because I could work with the data faster than you could manually on a terminal. After all, I have a more complex system, which may be able to parse data faster than a terminal could.”
“You seem to doubt my abilities. What would make you more adept than I?”
“I’m merely saying the idea is feasible, as it would save time decrypting and mapping out coordinate locations across the city. I could process the data myself and find out Rudi’s precise movements over the past several days. No offence to you, of course, but any method to achieve our collective goal more quickly would be the best method.”
Jaeger looked stunned — likely by being schooled at his own craft by an Automatic and by realizing that his own hubris was a problem in and of itself. He beckoned to Allen, who grabbed a chair and sat down next to Rudi. Jaeger strung several wires together and prepared to connect the two machines. “You could not have mentioned this idea sooner?” he asked.
“I wasn’t sure whether your plug would fit into my terminal.” Jaeger scanned the back of Allen’s head for several moments. “I do believe it would be better if I were standing for this procedure,” Allen said.
“Nonsense. Be quiet.” I walked over to watch the two brainiacs at work. Jaeger popped open Allen’s head and froze. He dropped the cords and gaped. My jaw nearly dropped as well. Even Toby’s blue eyes seemed to open wider.
Allen wasn’t lying — it had a brain. Or something very similar to one, at least.
From the back, the contraption looked quite brain-like, but instead of fleshy grey mounds, the organ inside Allen’s head was luminescent and looked to be built out of brilliant crystal. The material felt as tough as steel. The crystal bumps and curves weaved through the head, electrical signals and fluids zipping through the clear tubes. It glowed like a gem, running like an engine, but moving and conforming like a living thing, learning and adapting.
Jaeger’s eyes begged for answers.
“He’s supposedly a Synthian, whatever those are. New robots, but … they’re different … as you can probably tell.”
