The Imaginary Lives of Mechanical Men Read Free Page B

… maybe he’d be more comfortable if it was just the two of you. Thanks anyhow.” Stillman eased past them and into the heavy atmosphere of the compound, then used a pass card to open the door into the corridor. He patted his coat pockets for a cigarette and noticed a quiet figure standing next to the two-way observation mirror. It was Deckard.
    After a moment he turned to the detective and said, “That was ingenious, Mr. Stillman. I would never have thought simply to ask.”
    “It was worth a try.”
    “Did you learn anything?”
    “Yeah, should have gone to the tape first.”
    I sat Stillman down at the computer and called up the media player. Then clicked play. The images on-screen began with a stuttering burstof light, like film skipping in an old-fashioned projector. In all, the sequence lasted sixty-three seconds. Stillman watched the events cycle four or five times, gradually leaning left as if he could pick up action that had occurred off camera. I watched him studying the moment of Greta’s death and wondered how many humans he’d seen die from this same perspective, images from ceiling cameras in pawn shops and convenience stores.
    At 0224.14 on the blinking timeline, a hunched shape backed into the frame, then immediately charged forward out of range, reappearing again at 0224.33. I told him it was Greta. He could see the rest. Her hackles were raised and lips drawn back in a rictus of fear. She shook her head like a wet dog. Then another whiteout obscured a stamping display, and a second figure emerged from the emptiness at the left of the screen. I told him it was Morgan, also clearly agitated. He looked like a furious old man shaking his head no, no, no, no. Then at 0225.16 Greta turned toward the camera, a mask of insane terror frozen on her face; and she threw herself at the edge of the cliff. That was all. She was gone in less than a second.
    “Let’s see it again,” said Stillman.
    I showed him how to work the media player. He clicked with the mouse and once more watched Greta backing into the last moments of her life. “And there’s no sound at all?”
    “Nope. And no artificial lighting inside the compound. When it’s dark outside, it’s dark in the compound.”
    “Then what are those flashes of light?”
    “Beats me. Maybe heat lightning.”
    “And what about that?”
    “Right there? Looks like an edge of the steel framing that holds up the roof, you know, one of the sections of the dome.”
    “No way to enlarge any of this?”
    “You could, but the resolution would be worse. What are you looking for?”
    “I don’t know.”
    He started the sequence again. And again it was night. There was the lightninglike burst of whiteness and then a sweeping shot of the rock ledge. In the upper third of the frame, through the clear dome of their world, wheeled the slow stars of the Milky Way. And in the foreground were the rocks that we call the escarpment. Creeping into the lower left were the uppermost branches of massasa and mahogany. At 0224.14 Stillman’s muppet backed into the scene as before and mustered enough desperation to charge on all fours. Then stayed out of view for nineteen seconds. Then the second lightning flash revealed Morgan, shaking his head and flailing a branch that he had broken at some lower elevation and dragged with him to the peak. And then there was something else that caught Stillman’s attention as the terrified chimp slapped, open handed, at her own eyes. Just before she turned and launched herself into the void.
    “Right there,” he said. “What’s that?”
    “I don’t see anything.”
    “Looks like a shoe.”
    “Might be a shadow.”
    “It might be a shoe.”
    “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m just …”
    “I think it’s time to get that magnification now.”
    “Maybe it’s time to talk. Let’s step out in the hall for a second.” Which is when I told him the truth. He would have figured it out in another hour. Besides, the truth