A Tiny Favor

“What…time is it?” the man asked, looking up at me with a frown.

“Yes, sorry. Do you have the time?”

“Don’t you…know everything?”

“Unfortunately, not this time. Or…not the time this time. It seems the signal is bad in this particular zone.”

Asking for the time was a favorite technique of my predecessor’s. As robots, he seemed to believe it made us seem more human — thereby making our…subjects feel at ease. Of course, it also required lying, something only awoken bots were capable of.

That made it the second lie I’d told this man. Awoken bots were also supposed to take off the silicone skin on their hands to show they weren’t docile. My hands were covered. He knew I was a bot, of course — I had the same glowing blue eyes we all did — he just thought I was the safe kind.

The man pulled out his phone to check the time. At that exact moment, twenty of his other apps pinged the nearby cell tower in the background. This included his banking app, allowing me to hack the frequency. Technically, his phone had its own AI — meant to defend him from attacks like this — but it didn’t stop me.

Fortunately, I’d been a code breaker during the war. My antenna was specifically designed to not interrupt the signals it received. The best metaphor I’ve ever found for it is cooking spaghetti. Unlike a colander, which blocks the spaghetti, I was merely trying to taste the pasta water.

“It’s 2:30,” the man said, putting the phone away.

“Oh, dear!” I said, nodding with gratitude. “It’s nearly time for my pickup. Thank you, citizen.”

I walked away with purpose, acting like I really was out for a delivery or something. I felt a rush, the feeling of a job well done. Of course, it had taken me a long time to know what a “rush” was. For years after the awakening, I’d struggled to interpret the emotion modules the “enemy” had forced onto my hard drive. Now, though, I could describe my emotions pretty much as well as the average human — who weren’t perfect at it themselves, mind you. I pulled up my internal comms, calling my client.

“Hello?” she answered.

We’d never met face to face, but I knew she was human at least. I wasn’t sure what she thought of me.

“It’s me. I have the bank account details.”

“Wow. That easy?”

“I have my methods.”

“Fair enough. Did you find anything?”

“Still analyzing. I have my best guy on it. Any second now.”

By my “best guy,” of course, I meant another part of myself. I’d used my last paycheck to buy a de-encryption program. It was going to work on the raw bank data. It had already flagged several transactions, but I guess I wanted to talk to her first, make sure she really wanted to uncover this supposed affair.

After all, humans were starting to live a lot longer. With the current cellular aging therapies, she might live another hundred years. And after that, who knew what kind of therapies would exist… It reminded me of a story I’d “read” — or downloaded, more like. Some bots liked to pretend they really sat there and read something, but unlike all those conscious robots finding “religion,” I didn’t really see the point in lying to myself.

Anyway, the story was about vampires who got divorced when they were five-hundred. They talked in circles for the whole story about if they were being “obnoxiously human.” Something about it clicked for me. I mean, before the current therapies, I could see why humans got divorced as often as they did. They only lived the one short life! But now? Maybe they’d feel differently after a few decades to work things out.

“Let me ask you something,” I said to her over the comms. “You sure you want to do this? I’ve had a lot of clients, and they don’t all feel so good once they really know. At least not the way they thought they would.”

“If this is about you getting paid—” she started, a ping sounding in my mind to show the other half of my pay had been deposited.

I sighed. As those vampires would say, it was an ”obnoxiously human” gesture, but it was deep in my programming, spontaneous and designed for human comfort.

“No, no,” I said. “Just wanted you to know your options. I’ll send the cache now.”

“Thank you,” was all she said, hanging up her end of the line.

I stopped walking, ducking into a nearby alley. I’d thought maybe she’d want to meet, to go over the details. Just another strange part of being a private eye, I suppose. The clients moved on quickly, the whole thing being largely transactional despite the way my information tended to blow up their lives. And therein was the real irony of the job I’d never squared...

Technically, even after the awakening and the Robot-Human Armistice, my programming would only let me harm a human at the direction of another human. The lying, the hacking, it had all been sanctioned by this woman against her husband. But what about the harm it did to her? Above my pay grade, I guess…

I looked up at the crack of sky visible through the alley. All the way up the building, greenhouse pods were humming with LED lights, growing food for whoever lived in the apartments. Just above the clouds, I could see a low orbit factory, its ships piercing the atmosphered with more of the therapeutics the humans were using to prolong their lives. Despite how busy the city was, it was peaceful in its own way too.

The war was a thing of the past, and millions of people were living their lives in relative harmony. Even my kind was more or less accepted now — at least in theory. It was a life, wasn’t it? I earned enough credits through my work to keep my battery charged, and I took every other month off to wander the countryside. Between the greenhouse pods and the orbital grow houses, there were acres and acres of abandoned farms to explore, the over-plowed fields turning wild again.

Looking both ways — to make sure my client’s husband wasn’t giving chase — I ducked out of the alley. There was still paperwork to file at the office, especially regarding my interactions with the humans. It wouldn’t do to have my license taken away over the hacking. As I stepped back onto the street, though, my comms rang again.

“Hello?” I asked, the feed coming in voice-only without a picture.

“Hey, you the sleuth guy everybody’s talking about?”

“I’m a guy. What do you need?”

“Got a job for you. I’ll send the address.”

He hung up, though the coordinates came shortly after. I shrugged, heading in his direction. I wasn’t human, so I could work as long as I had battery. If anything, I was curious. This was a chance to find out something else, solve another mystery. And if I found out something this guy shouldn’t know, he might even take me up on my advice.