Launo was practicing a speech as he came to usher us into his room, eager for an audience that was semi-willing to listen, and we were treated to an opinionated and haphazardly researched stance on how people who practiced fad diets were often shown to raise children who would overeat. When I critiqued his view with a few points to which he had not yet thought up counterpoints, he waved me off and said that good speeches are more about passion than getting the facts right. I flippantly told him that he would be a great politician. He asked me how I guessed that’s what he was going for. I walked out of the room, without waiting for Milla.

  We walked across the hallway to Hale’s room to round out the tour after Milla caught up, and he practically bowled her over when he walked through the doorway as Milla reached out to the keypad to signal our presence. He flung his arms out to catch his gadget while mine shot out to steady Milla, who, serendipitously, happened to be the exact person he had been going to find. He was wondering if Milla could let him into the Matron’s room since Kirsi was conducting her meetings in a sitting room on the first floor so that he could calibrate his gift for her. Hale had been illegally tampering with a domestic Agridrone model in his free time, outside of his engineering coursework, in order to reprogram it to take care of Kirsi’s various plants. Milla let him in without any further questions after he told her that, were it to work correctly, she wouldn’t have to take care of any of the plants in the room for the foreseeable future, though his plans seemed to have forgotten to account for the Encholirium specimens, which I mentioned to Milla. She said that was fine since Kirsi wouldn’t want anyone but her to look after them anyway and that it would be a small way she could give back to her predecessors. Hale set to work while Milla stood in the doorway and I stood lookout over the staircases. He exited the room around twelve minutes later, cradling his creation, and he proceeded down to the first floor with the enthusiastic grin of a procrastinator that finished with seconds to spare, a young man after my own heart.

  “I know you Collector types aren’t usually keen on taking tours in the flesh, so you have my gratitude for helping to distract me. It’s not often that I miss a deadline,” Milla said, cracking her knuckles out over the balustrade as she leaned over it next to me.

  “I figured you had noticed, but I wouldn’t deign to pull you out of your element. I can tell you have found your purpose here after seeing how you interact with the others. Was the deadline important?” I asked, checking my data pad to see how much time Kirsi had until her deadline.

  “Not anymore, I think,” Milla replied, waving to Elli with a smile on her face as the girl wound up the stairs. “I was going to take some time to think about what I want to say to Kirsi when I wait with her until you are ready, but I don’t want to script it. I want it to come naturally or if there is naturally nothing at all, that would be fine too.”

  “That is how it should be. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll come around again at 3:40 to ensure that it will all be over by 4:00. I’ll leave the choice to have the children sequestered to their rooms or not to you, but, due to the circumstances, the cleanup crew and the appointed auditor will arrive promptly, as the Bureau does not account for grief, for which I am sorry.”

  “Very well. Until then,” Milla managed, as I left her in tenuous peace to return to my room.

  I spent the rest of the interim time submitting records to the Bureau via my data pad while chatting with Daria, who decided to reenact the Collection she had just completed from the PsOV of all involved. Her target was a former worker of a deep-sea mining operation for rare battery metals who decided to spend most of each day for the rest of his days starting the week before his thirty-sixth birthday in a submersible, thinking that it might help him avoid Collection.

  Daria screened into my data pad to show me her imitation of the triumphant look on his face when he finally surfaced in front of Daria’s team’s skimmer drones, and then sent me a pic of his crestfallen expression after she told him this was the first day of his Collection window. He was thirty-seven years and five days old. She doubled over laughing and almost split her head on the toilet when she slipped on the shower terrace while getting out as she sent me a clip of Gis’ new avatar in a VRMMO she was playing, whose sinewy barbarian was rendered with state of the art, photorealistic graphics, except for its head, which was replaced by a cropped image of this poor target’s head that had become slightly pixelated in the compression and transfer. I didn’t stop laughing until my image of her cabinets automatically opening and shutting stayed in-frame for forty seconds and I thought I should summon paras, but I heard a few more snrks and then she patched herself up. I told her that she might be in for some trouble if the image went full meme, and she said she tagged the initial release, so she’ll know who releases it if it gets out of the Bureau and that person would be in for the worst of it. She allowed me to return to my submissions after that, and I was able to finish with enough time to scroll through the rest of the eight-sec files she had sent me of “Cocky Collectee” and “Crestfallen Collectee” before checking my gear on my way to the Matrons.

  I walked across the third floor while updating my handler, the cleanup crew, and the auditor of my plan. Then, I ComComed Milla that I was on my way. I walked through the Matron’s door, hijacked the inside keypad and placed the room in lockdown while illuminating the overhead panels.

  “Good evening, Matron Ki —”

  “Good evening, Collector,” Kirsi cut in. “I heard from Milla about your generous allotment of twenty minutes, but I’d just like to get this over with if you don’t mind.”

  I looked first at Kirsi, who looked remarkably similar to how she had the previous evening, sitting in the same chair, looking out the same window, same hairstyle, wearing the same shoes and sweater, same terse affect, but she had on burgundy sweatpants. Then, I looked at Milla to gauge her mood. She was standing next to Kirsi; hand on her matron’s shoulder, Kirsi’s hand over hers. She nodded with an easy smile.

  “We’re ready.” She determined.

  “Say only one thing more, then! Milla, please come here.”

  I gestured in front of me and Milla stood in her place. I activated one of my collar cameras and then I raised my injection gauntlet, spun up a new syringe, and dislodged it.

  “Due to the special regulation of Onniheim Orphanage pursuant to article 57–b of your contract with The Bureau of Fortune, I, Collector H 66K28, authorize you, Milla Jokela, Matron–Prospect, to collect the life of Matron Kirsi Halko, through lethal injection, as my proxy. Should you accept and commit actions warranting reasonable suspicion of dereliction of duty, your life may be forfeit to my immediate Collection. Do you accept this charge? Answer yes or no.”

  “Yes,” Milla responded, with confidence.

  I held the syringe in front of the camera and indicated how Milla should hold it. Then, I set it down on the edge of one of the planters and backed away. Kirsi rolled her right sleeve up in preparation, and then she resumed looking out the windows in silence. Milla retrieved the syringe, holding it appropriately, and I unanchored my EinIn while following her over to Kirsi. She bent down to embrace her mentor, her hero, one last time, and they whispered something into each other’s ears. Milla administered the injection, and I walked over and retrieved the spent syringe, turning it over in front of the camera, and then I cut off the camera feed. I stepped in front of Kirsi to confirm her passing and sent my CC ping. I studied Milla’s face and admired her conviction. She spoke first.

  “You want to know what we said, don’t you?”

  “I don’t. That is for you two to know. There should still be some privacy in this world. You can have the next sixteen minutes to yourself. The team can wait that long on my account.”

  Milla sat down in the free chair, beside her mentor, staring out at the snow.

  “Will you come for me at the end of my time?” She asked, tears beginning to roll down her cheeks.

  “I would say that is unlikely, given any requests to that effect would raise suspicion. Would you prefer me to come?” I asked, turning to leave and returning the security of the room to normal.

  “I would. You understand how these things should be. You might also be the only one who would be able to attest to whether or not I have fulfilled my goals,” the Matron replied, wicking the last of her tears with her blouse cuffs.

  “I have every confidence in you, as did Kirsi,” I bolstered, looking back at the Encholirium.

  “What if I told them that? That you would be the best one from a data collection standpoint?” she said, looking to check off one more box.

  “Hmmm. Now there’s an idea. Ask to put it in the contract you are about to sign,” I proposed, having difficulty detaching.

  I keyed the door open, and then I looked back.

  “One more thing I feel compelled to ask, if you would honor me with a response. When I spoke with Kirsi, she told me about the moment she knew she wanted you to become the next Matron and she told me to ask you about it. Apparently, you gave voice to something that resonated with why she initially took on the role. Do you remember what it was?”

  Milla thought for a moment and then she got up from the chair and looked at Kirsi, around the room, and then at me.

  “It was about why this place exists and why I want it to still exist.”

  She looked back out at the skies and raised her arms and her voice.

  “One life, unwillingly taken, set the foundation for all of this. I wonder … what can one life, willingly given, do?”

  6

  2355 – The Friend

  I was walking under the tracks of a mag train on my way to the factory when I was accosted by some slummies who were surprisingly bold in their approach of a Collector. It turns out they were looking for an audience as opposed to trouble. They fancied themselves performers, and they were wondering if I would be willing to pay to hear a few songs. I asked them why they didn’t upload if they thought they were good enough to make money and they shook their wrists to show they didn’t possess data pads, which was not surprising given the rest of their ratty attire. One of them had decided shorts and just the hood and tassels of a hoodie was an outfit worth wearing. They boasted that they could beatbox any song I could request, and they would dance too, even though one of their crew had clearly been hobbling along as they hounded me on my way. Despite my telling them I didn’t have any cash on me and they didn’t have any CFOBs, given the lack of data pads, they still wanted to sing for me so that maybe I would spread their name where I go and more people would come and see them. They followed me most of the way, belting their raps as I filtered through the crowds of Joburg in the early morning. After their maimed buddy hollered in pain as a suit pushed him to the ground and out of his way without so much as a blink, I turned around and tossed them a few bags of enriched candies I had pulled out of my pack after telling them to call it quits for the day and they seemed appreciative. They had little, but they had each other.

  I walked past the chipped sign standing in a courtyard out in front of my target building, the face of which had been tagged with graffiti too many times to fulfill its purpose anymore, and I rapped on the reinforced rolling door after verifying that the biometric entry methods had been vandalized as well. After three minutes passed with no answer, I stepped back out in front of the decrepit building and began surveying for an alternate mode of ingress. Some of the windows closer to the roof had been shattered, so I flicked up the controls to one of my sniper drones on my data pad and steered it in through the breach, down to the factory floor, to the other side of the door, and directed it to slam the barrel of its rifle into the manual release for the door security a few times until I heard a buzz and a clunk. I rolled the door open slightly, shimmied in, closed the door and relocked it, calling my other sniper drone to me via a follow command executed on its twin’s line before releasing them both to roam within the dank confines of the premises.

  This factory was one of two major facilities in the area that used to produce the world’s lines of Betje Bot, an early service bot model that would eventually be outcompeted and rendered obsolete by Domestidrones. The appeal of the Betje Bot models was that they were tailor–made, customizable, and were developed with exceptional abilities to develop familiarity with a large range of interlocutors and tailor interactions to individual users, though they would begin to degrade after a few years of continued use. The models had initially impressed early adopters to sell well enough to merit further development, but the company had focused too much on personality engineering and not enough on adaptive service functions to be able to compete with the Domestidrone line that launched nine months later. People were more interested in domestic mechanical laborers or sexual servants than domestic mechanical conversation partners, and Domestidrones could perform the tasks of the former roles with aplomb and the tasks of the latter horrendously for my standards but good enough for the general populace, who often found it grueling to muster much more than a simple greeting for a stranger, electronic or otherwise. The company behind the Betje Bots went bankrupt around fifteen years ago and they ceased production, closing their two factories. This factory, the smaller of the two, was purchased almost immediately after it closed and has been reactivated four times since the date it was ostensibly decommissioned.

  I clicked on one of the flashlights embedded in my chest plate and began to follow one of the assembly tracks further into the building, ducking under a few of the massive mechanical arms positioned along them that were used to piece the bots together. Suddenly, one of my sniper drones pinged my pad to warn of a movement within my threat radius that I couldn’t quite see as I heard a scraping sound in the darkness off to my right under a walkway. I pulled my EinIn, clicked its flashlight on, and covered behind one of the assembly arms, feeling my heart pounding in my throat. As I listened to more scraping and the sound of metal parts colliding, I flicked up the NV feed from the drone that detected the disruption to see that the threat was armed with … arms. Vaulting over a conveyor, I disengaged the sniper drone and approached the Betje Bot that was dressed in a baker’s hat and an apron that was dangling from its neck without being tied in the back. It was picking up parts of discombobulated bots from a scrap heap.

  “Betje Bot? What is your name?” I called out.

  “Shopper … is my … name.” The bot replied in a fragmented voice.

  “Hello, Shopper. My name is Collector. What are you doing?”

  “I had tOOOooooo visit the bakery. Would you like to come aLOng?”

  “Where is the bakery?”

  “Well, we are already at specify location.”

  “Where will you go next?”

  “My next desTInaTIOn is the club … house. I need two more loaves before I LEEEave.”

  “Can you show me the clubhouse?”

  “YEsss. More friends are allllways welcome!”

  I picked up another of the tarnished arms that Shopper seemed to be collecting, whose shoulder joint had been cracked and from which a few fingers had gone missing.

  “OhhhHHH. Collector. You found another loaf! It’s a little burnt. You are so adjective missing! Can you carry it to the clubhouse with me?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “Can you ffinnnnd one more first? Then we will have theee five loaves I need.”

  I looked around the back of the pile for another intact bot arm and tossed a hand over to the other side as I rummaged through it.

  “Collector. ThhhAT is a biscuit. Harvey asked for French bread this morning. Can you find FREench bread?”

  “Will this do?” I asked Shopper, showing it an arm I had retrieved from the center of the pile that seemed to be in decent shape.

  “That is a great loaf, Collector? Let’s go back to the clubhouse! Harvey will bEEEe pleased.”

  Shopper turned its roughly 1.8–meter–tall frame around and began trundling along down the factory floor and I followed it for a time, shining my lights on the few remaining mechanized assembly stations that had not been sold off for repurposing before the factory was reacquired.

  “Shopper? May I fix your apron for you?” I asked as I watched one of its tassels brush over a set of gears, almost getting stuck.

  “I don’t know what missing queried subject is, but I could use soOOme fixing. It has been two hundred and thirty-six days since my last maintenance.”

  We turned down a hallway, and Shopper circumvented the remains of a light fixture that had crashed to the floor.

  “SOOOo, Collector? Where are you from?”

  I had never interacted with a Betje Bot before, as they had become collector’s items as soon as their production stopped. This one had degraded considerably but had not become rampant by any means. It still seemed to carry out functions well, and this attempt at small talk was impressive. If not for the occasional inappropriate intonation and volume changes in its speech and monotonous error and update messages, I might have forgotten I was conversing with a bot at all in the darkness.

  “I’m from the NER. Do you know where that is?”

  “Yes. Harvey is also from the NER! What AAAAaa coincidence!”

  “How do you know Harvey, Shopper?”

  “I am Harvey’s oOOoldest buddy.”

  We approached a door that was cracked open, and I saw light coming from inside and heard voices conversing.

  “Shopper? Is the clubhouse through this door?”

  “Yes. I will introduce you to Harvey. Come in!”

  “No. You go on ahead, and I will meet with you two later. Can you keep me a secret from Harvey? I want to surprise him!”

  “Okay. Bye, Collector. User profile archived.”

  Shopper entered the room and returned the door to its previous cracked position and I spent some time observing my target through the windowpane set in it.

 

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