Eye Candy (46 page)

“Are you on fire?”

“Wait.” Still coughing, Owen thrust his hand into a pants pocket on the side of his leg. He withdrew his phone. He tapped the screen a few times and then thrust it toward Danny. “Is this you?”

On the phone’s screen, Danny saw an image of himself. It was his author photo for
The Rock of God
.

“Handsome devil, ain’t I?”

“It
is
you! Holy shit, man. Dude, your book is like my own personal Holy Bible. I discovered Atheism because of you. I owe my life to you. Let me get a pic.”

“It’s not really about that. I mean–”

Owen put one arm around Danny’s shoulders and leaned close as he held up the phone.

Danny tried to smile his professional “author” smile, sexy but intellectual.

“Got it.” Owen admired the photo. “Before I discovered your book, I used to be such a worrywart. I used to spend all my time wondering if I was a good person, if I was wasting my life, if I was just another pathetic cog in the great money machine making us believe promiscuity and morality are not mutually exclusive. You said it right here in chapter three. . . .”

Owen tapped and swiped at the screen several times.

“Chapter three, and I quote, ‘There are those who would have us believe that the risque imagery upon which the very foundation of the multibillion-dollar advertising industry is built is antithetically divine in origin, that in fact such imagery is a clever ruse designed to distract us from our higher purpose, to wreak havoc in our lives by sewing seeds of doubt and dissatisfaction in our minds, causing us to question all that we are given until we flee from that which is right and good and seek instead that which provides no satisfaction, yields no answers, and therefore blinds us to the truth.

“ ‘But the truth is that there is no truth. There is only thought, word, deed, action, and reaction. And, one day, death.’ ”

Owen ended his recitation and turned to Danny. “Dude, that is fucking genius.”

“I actually wrote that?”

“The book has your name and picture on it.”

“That’s fuckin’ depressing.”

“It’s fuckin’ genius, dude. I’ve never been so happy as I was the day I read that paragraph and realized I had to stop torturing myself, that I should just live my life, and be myself, and do what I want to do. You know?”

“Sure. But . . . what if I was wrong?”

“Huh?”

“What if everything I said was wrong? That book is supposed to be about robots. To help us program them, and to help us understand them and the way they think and speak and behave.”

“Robots are just machines, man.” Owen sparked the bowl and took another hit. “Like can openers and shit.”

Danny considered Owen’s statement.

On the other side of the service station lot, a robot was putting air into the tire of a vehicle. An elderly woman sat patiently in the passenger seat.

Across the street were a young woman and a robot, both dressed in exercise attire and running shoes. They were on the corner, jogging in place while they waited for the light to change. The robot wore a headband, despite its inability to sweat. The robot slapped the big yellow crosswalk button several times.

Owen rambled on. His eyes were red and puffy. “Like, sometimes, me and my friends will drive out to Antelope Valley, to one of the big robot wrecking yards, to find some old shitty bots to buy for a few dollars. And we’ll throw ’em in the trunk and then go find a secluded place where we can hook ’em up to an old car battery to make ’em talk. And then we’ll get really high and point guns at ’em and threaten ’em with deactivation and shit. And they always beg us not to do it. And then we blow ’em away. Fuckin’ positrons everywhere, dude. I like the way they sparkle in the headlights.” Owen took another hit from Danny’s pipe. “It’s awesome.”

“You kill robots?”

Owen laughed and accidentally coughed out his smoke. “You can’t kill something that isn’t alive, man. You of all people should know that.”

“You make them beg for their lives, and then you shoot them?”

“For real, man. Right in the head.” Owen pointed his index and middle fingers as if they were a gun. He mimed firing it, simulating the slow-motion kickback. “Dude, you should come with us. We were talking about going tomorrow. You should totally come.”

“Get out.”

“Huh?”

“Give me my pipe,” Danny snatched the pipe and lighter from Owen’s hand, “and get the fuck out of my car.”

Owen’s phone lit up and vibrated in his hand. He answered it as he slowly exited Danny’s convertible. “Hello? . . . Hey, man. . . . Dude, I’m at work, getting high with Daniel Olivaw . . . Yes, way. . . . Dude, he’s a fuckin’ dick. I invited him to come waste some bots with us tomorrow and he got all pissed and kicked me out of his car.”

Danny pressed the ignition button on his dash and put the car in gear. He whipped the car out of the lot, with the sound of the tires grabbing asphalt.

Danny checked his rearview mirror. Owen stood with his arm raised, his middle finger in the air. He was still on the phone.

~

The car wended its way up Mulholland Drive, the reverse of the route he’d taken with Harley after their date on Catalina Island.

Danny had no idea where he was going. He wasn’t even driving. He’d put the car on autodrive after leaving the 76 station. The e-paper with Candy’s digital rendering lay on the passenger seat, fluttering in the breeze swirling around the interior of the car. Danny hated to look at it, hated to see her like that. Yet he could scarcely look away. He wanted to toss it out of the car. He also wanted to hang on to it. Perhaps even masturbate to it.

He glanced at the time projected in his car’s heads-up display. He’d smoked a lot after leaving the 76 station, was very high, and his eyes felt like cotton. He blinked several times until a bit of moisture refreshed his eyes.

The red digits gleamed in the heads-up-display. 10:47.

Danny glanced at the e-paper with Candy’s picture on it. It was almost as if she were standing on the seat.

He took another hit from his little black pipe and filled his lungs with hot Silver Afghani smoke.

Danny’s car drove itself further up Mulholland, winding up and up the dark, twisting lane. There were no other cars on the road. Danny turned off his headlights and drove in the dark the way Harley had done. The car didn’t need lights, it utilized satellite navigation. The full moon was climbing into the sky, and the trees and the road were bathed in pale moonlight. Despite its undeniable beauty, Danny would not have wanted to attempt to drive by only the light of the moon. He would let his car do the work. One more example of a machine besting a human. Perhaps it was a fitting balance, for somewhere, out there, in places like Antelope Valley, there were dipshit service station attendants torturing scrapped robots.

Ahead on the right, a scenic lookout came into view.

“Pull over here.”

The white convertible glided slowly off the road and into the lot. Danny sat behind the wheel, staring at the valley and its endless sea of lights. Universal City. Toluca Lake. North Hollywood. Slicing down the middle of the valley was Lankershim Boulevard.

And there, between Lankershim and the Hollywood freeway, lit up brighter than an airport, Danny saw it.

Robot Palace.

Impossible to miss, even from this distance.

Rory’s description of it replayed in Danny’s mind:

“Robots destroying humans . . . Fucked-up, old-world gladiator shit, but with a new futuristic twist. Sex . . . Orgies. Acted out on a stage covered with dirt to soak up all the blood. Just like the Romans did it thousands of years ago.”

Statements echoed by Owen the Robot Murderer.

Danny considered it.

Did he want to see that kind of stuff?

Could it be as bad as Rory had claimed?

Danny fired the little bowl on his pipe. The cherry burned and the weed crackled. He exhaled a long plume of smoke, blowing it at Robot Palace. The smoke whirled against the windshield and curled back on itself. The lights of Robot Palace gleamed through the smoke.

Danny coughed a few times and smiled.

Yes. He absolutely wanted to see that kind of stuff.

He tapped the screen of his nav system. In a matter of seconds, he was on his way.

Chapter 32

Robot Palace

Even before Danny reached the parking lot, he was awed by the size of Robot Palace.

People lined both sides of the road. They shouted and shook their fists and waved signs in the air.

GOD HATES ROBOTS!

ROBOTS STEAL JOBS!

HUMANS FIRST!

A contingent of cops stood between the protestors and the road. Some were human, some were robocops like Barney, big and scary. All of them were heavily armed.

Many of the protesters were more obsessed with the robocops than with Danny as he drove past them.

At last he arrived at the Palace. The exterior was all silver and gold, with long, sweeping lines. Parapets topped the metallic walls. It looked more like a castle than a palace. A castle fused with a space ship. Klieg lights shot their intense beams onto the building’s skin. The beams shifted colors, all of them transitioning together, lazily from purple to red to blue to green to white and back again.

Danny sat behind the wheel until his car brought him to a gentle halt under a high portico.

A highly-polished silver robot valet opened Danny’s door.

Danny carefully rolled the e-paper into a tube and tucked it neatly into an inner pocket of his leather jacket.

He got out of his car and the silver robot handed a ticket to him. The robot seated itself in Danny’s car and drove away, into the underground parking facility.

Danny watched it go. He turned and followed the red carpet up the stairs toward massive double doors that had to be fifty feet high.

Silver robots wearing bowties stood on either side of the long red carpet. The Palace lights gleamed on their silver bodies.

A limousine sat parked near the stairs, long and black, with a sleek nose. It looked fast.

“Whose limo is that?” Danny asked.

A nearby robot replied, “Sir, the vehicle belongs to Presidential candidate Les Grossman.”

Sure enough, a hologram graced the side of the limousine depicting Les Grossman in a blue suit and red tie. An American flag pin adorned his lapel. The hologram came to life.

“Vote Les Grossman for President, for a better tomorrow. Because hope is a memory of the future.”

“Man, that guy is everywhere.”

“Enjoy your evening, sir,” said the robot.

Inside the towering gold doors was a massive foyer populated with sofas and chairs upholstered in luscious red and burgundy and purple fabrics, all arranged into cozy sitting areas. Sounds of a piano filled the air, rising above the din of conversation.

Seated throughout the foyer were a variety of people. Some wore jeans and tee shirts. Others wore suits and ties. Still others wore tuxedos, and were situated on a dais near an enormous black grand piano. A beautiful woman sat playing the piano. Bright orange hair cascaded down to her shoulders, and a silver, sequined evening gown graced her body, swooping low to reveal the delicate cleft of her buttocks. Danny walked past her. She turned her head. Between her teeth she held a long black cigarette holder. Smoke snaked upward from the tip of her cigarette. She looked at Danny with glowing red cyborg eyes. She smiled.

Danny smiled back.

The entire foyer gave the appearance of a lavish, very expensive hotel, something out of the 1920s, perhaps.

Danny wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.

He made his way through the crowd and took a seat at the bar. Behind the bar was a long display case with row after row of shelves lined with jars of herb. Big jars, small jars. All labeled: Blueberry Trainwreck; Northern Lights; OG Kush; Headband; Romulan; Pineapple Express; Acapulco Gold; Silver Afghani; Tokyo Bubblegum; Maui Waui; Parisian Night Train; U.K. Cheese; NYC Diesel; Oaksterdam High; and on and on. As well as an endless array of edibles: Keef Kola; Sativa Coffee; Chocolate Colorado Buddercups; 3 Rastateers; Munchy Way; and Buddafinger.

Adjacent to the bar was a restaurant awash with red and purple lights. Even on a Monday night, the restaurant looked to be at near capacity. Human and robot servers alike tended to their tables. A family of out-of-towners in t-shirts and blue jeans were taking photographs of themselves. A group of men in business suits sat pouring over digital spreadsheets. Danny spotted half a dozen movie stars.

A robot with round blue eyes and a grill for a mouth approached. “Welcome to the Palace, good sir. I am your budtender, Simnon. What can I get you?”

“Give me a shot of your best vodka.” Danny withdrew the e-paper from his pocket and unrolled it on the bar. The hologram of Candy rose up before his eyes, casting its blue light across his face.