The Pieces of My Self

37 - The Ring

LILLIAN

Remy's Shop, 15 June 2174, Wednesday

Remy surprised me by saying Fluffy was ready to pick up early. I thanked him and hung up before realizing I had no place to put the robot until after the storm. The Fluffy problem was almost as critical as getting Debra's ring off. Bouts of nausea and a mild fever gripped me. My finger throbbed and was warm to the touch. Maybe Remy had something in his toolkit to remove the damn thing.

The morning was hazy and sultry when a Sammy dropped us near the south-side docks. I walked with Amara to The Nautical Fix, navigating around a guy sleeping on a piece of cardboard under the shade of an awning. The shop now sported a broken windowpane near the front door, which I chalked up to a slum hazard.

I buzzed for entry.

Remy seemed to be on the mend, although his face was puffy. He gave me an elaborate flourish with his hand when he saw me. "Bonjour. Enter."

I spotted Fluffy near a workbench. It had a few more dents than I remembered and had somehow grown a second arm—a smaller one on the left side with a three-fingered hand. I wondered whether its brain suffered from the chip extraction.

Remy gave a beckoning motion toward the robot, and the machine clanked toward us, accompanied by an assistant. The young man lifted his eyebrows, as if to signal Hiya.

"You remember Damas," Remy said. "He's my go-to guy for robotics. He worked on Fluffy."

"I am so grateful," I said, shaking his hand. "I'm amazed at how quickly you put Humpty back together."

He shrugged, as if embarrassed by the praise. "The AS was in bad shape. Somebody bashed it real good."

"It was hit by a car," I said.

"No, it wasn't," Amara said, tugging on my arm. "Why did you say that?"

Damas shook his head slowly. "Some of the damage was pretty localized, like the removal of memory chips."

I had been caught in a lie and tried to wiggle out of it. "Okay, okay. I was embarrassed about living in a seedy neighborhood. It wasn't a car. My kids think Prowl Boys did it."

Remy's lips stretched to a thin smile. "Do you think it was Prowl Boys?"

"No," I said.

"They're after something about Henri Knightly, eh?"

The question was hard to evade, but I tried, shrugging. "What could they possibly want from a dead man?"

He held his gaze. "Something to do with his estate?"

"Maybe they were after the secret location of my prized bottlecap collection. I've got a few that are real doozies. They'll be worth a lot in a few decades, and I keep them well-hidden."

A fleeting smile crossed his face. "Well, now you have a two-fisted robot to protect your bottlecaps."

"Yeah, but it got clobbered in the first round of a match. Not much fight in him. Too bad it's not one of those Sentinels."

He chuckled, then made a quick boxing feint and jab toward Fluffy's head. The AS didn't move. "I see what you mean," he said. "It's a wuss with Halgameyer restraints."

That hadn't occurred to me. Halgameyer restraints—a refinement of Asimov's Laws—were enacted a decade before the revolution to prohibit robots from lifting a finger against any human. The restraints had since been relaxed, much to the chagrin of thieves, belligerent humans, and political protestors.