+J.M.J.+
The Eyes Have It
A Minority Report/"A.I." Crossover
By "Matrix Refugee"
Author's Note:
I actually drafted much of this chapter long before I wrote the rest of the story; the inspiration for it came from the track on the soundtrack CD for Minority Report entitled "A New Beginning". Play it as you read the second half of the chapter and you'll see what I mean. I also did the right thing and watched the DVD of the film recently—and I promptly came to the shocking discovery that one of the characters in it is named Fletcher! So I may have to go back and correct my fic, not the hard way of renaming my character, but the easier way of going back and actually describing him better, since he's really nothing like the Fletcher in the film. WARNING: There is one mildly naughty bit in this chapter, but not enough to up the rating. I don't endorse fornication (I'm Catholic), but in this case, there's only one way for Agatha to find out if that old superstition or whatever it is really happens. Marrying someone might be pointless for her to attempt, since she seems too emotionally damaged from the way she was treated in Pre-Crime for her to function normally as someone's wife. Besides, she hasn't had the strongest moral training, so she, like Joe, doesn't know much better.
Disclaimer:
See Prologue.
Chapter VIII: Wide-Eyed Innocence
The scan of Joe's cube only confirmed Agatha's visions, Anderton's deductions and Joe's own verbal testimony to be true. Hobby had a full diagnostic run on Joe to make sure Bevins hadn't damaged him severely. The techs found a few of his conductors had been knocked askew, but nothing serious, nothing they couldn't fix right away. Agatha insisted on watching the whole operation, even though the techs—and Hobby—warned her it might prove a little disturbing. But it didn't faze her at all. Anderton found himself more unsettled: Joe looked so human on the outside, but underneath the surface.
"But what is to become of me now?" Joe asked, oddly concerned.
"We're going to bring you back to Haddonfield, to your owner," Anderton told Joe.
"They will not want me now," Joe said. "Innocent or not, they will say I have cost them too much trouble."
"We'll see about that," Fletcher said, patting Joe's shoulder reassuringly. Realizing his error, Fletcher blushed.
By nightfall, Anderton and Fletcher personally brought Joe to the offices of his owner, one Ms. Sondra Flack, who operated an escort service out of a hotel on Hackney Street, the Mirrored Rooms.
Ms. Flack regarded Joe from across her desk with a cold, almost indifferent look in her eye. "With the kind of notoriety he's gotten, frame-up or no frame-up, he's of little use now," she said. She looked up at the two detectives. "You know anyone who wants him?"
"I know of a few people," Anderton said.
Once they'd deposited Joe in storage in the back room of the station, Anderton went across town to the offices of the Haddonfield Dispatch. At the front desk, a receptionist told him and Fletcher that Halloran McGeever had just left for the night, but his partner Frank Sweitz was still in.
They entered one of the offices, where they came face to face with a dark, green-eyed young man in his shirtsleeves whom Anderton recognized as the skinny kid reporter at the Shangri-La the night of the murder.
"I was hoping you gents would come by so I could get the whole story from you," Sweitz said.
"Actually, we also wanted to ask you something," Anderton said. "Halloran McGeever told me he had connections with some agents for the CRF, so we were wondering if you knew how we could get in touch with them."
Sweitz smiled and spread his hands slightly. "You're talking to one of them," he said. "They've been hoping you'd turn Joe over to us, so they could bring him to one of the refuges over the border in Canada. He'll be in excellent care there."
"Well, that gets the shiny guy off our hands," Fletcher said.
A thought passed through Anderton's mind. "Could we hang onto Joe for a few days?" he asked. "There's someone who'd like to get to know him first."
"How much time you need?" Sweitz asked.
"Just the weekend," Anderton said.
"Now what are you doing with Joe?" Fletcher asked Anderton on their way out.
Anderton paused and drew in a long breath. "Agatha doesn't want to be a Pre-Cog any more. She read this old wives' tale that claims a psychic woman looses her gifts if she has relations with a man."
"So she wants to get cozy with Joe the robot, eh?" Something in Fletcher's tone sounded a sour note that clashed with his otherwise mischievous tone, but it could just be that they were both tired.
That evening, after a quick explanation to Lara, Anderton crashed for the night.
Next morning, when he was more alert, he explained to Lara, at length, what he had in mind.
"We can't have them together here, not with Agnes," Lara said.
"We could take them out to the cottage," Anderton suggested.
"Krista could take Agnes for the weekend," she said. "Besides, after all this, you need the time to rest and regroup."
"I know," he admitted. "And Agatha's caretakers will be looking for her."
"Dr. Hineman called last night when you were asleep."
"So what did you tell her?"
"The truth."
At sunset Saturday evening, Anderton sat with Lara on the back porch, looking down to the beach, watching Agatha as she walked alone. He'd explained the situation to Joe that morning before they'd left, and the Mecha had found the idea thoroughly inciting.
"Be honest with me: I still think you saw something in Agatha," Lara teased.
"No, I never did," he said. "They treated her as if she were part of the machine. She's too damaged by everything that's happened to her. I don't think she could reciprocate to anyone even if they tried."
Lara was listening, but she gazed down to the shore. "Look. She just might be learning to reciprocate."
Agatha sat down on the shore, right at the waterline, the small waves lapping at her feet.
She loved the water; if she could relate to any one of the elements, it was water. Its soft, cool touch relaxed her, helping her forget the pain of her visions. She skimmed her palms over the glass-smooth wet sand at her feet, letting the water wash over her fingers.
A shadow fell over her. Even before she saw its shape, she knew who it was. She looked up.
Joe approached and knelt beside her, sitting on his heels, clad in a plain gray shirt and khaki shorts borrowed from Anderton. The two men were about the same size, but Joe was a little slighter-built. "I knew I would find you here," he said.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Wherever water can be seen, your eyes go to it."
"I lived in water for six years," she said.
He cocked his head. "Were you a mermaid?" he asked, with a teasing lilt.
"No. The lab technicians at Pre-Crime kept me in shallow water to help me relax, so they could see my visions better."
He laid a hand on her wrist and stroked it gently. "From what your friend Mr. Anderton tells me, it seems they used your brain the way women have used me."
She had to ask. "Is it true?"
"Is what true?" he asked, his smooth brows gathered slightly.
"The legend…if a woman with psychic gifts…lies with a man, she loses her gifts."
"I would not know." Then with a tender smolder starting to glow in his eyes, he added, "There is only one way for you to discover the answer to your question."
She looked at him, a little fearful. "I don't think I could."
"Perhaps it is because you think of it in the wrong manner. Do not think of this embrace as a means of losing something: think, rather, that by it, you gain another kind of knowledge.
His hand crept up her arm to her shoulder as he moved in closer. The wavelets washed about their feet. "There is another legend, of a water sprite who longed to become human, that she might so win the love of a prince who swam in her waters every day. Undine, peri, rusalka…whatever name she bears from land to land." His eyes, almost the same blue green as the water about them, looked into hers from just inches away. "You are another water sprite, Agatha," he said. His forehead touched hers. "Let me make you human."
"Is this love?" she asked.
He hesitated. "For you it may be the only love you can know."
She reached out to him. "Make me human," she begged.
His hand on her shoulder slid behind her neck. She felt his chest press against hers. Then she felt his mouth touch hers in a gentle kiss, soft, velvety.
She drew back from him slightly. "Has it happened?" she asked.
He smiled on her with a puckish gleam in his eye. "No. It has only started." He guided her hand to his waist. "You are wise in ways few people are wise, and yet you still have much to learn."
"Is that why they call it knowing?" she asked.
He paused, thinking. "That is one reason."
"Teach me more," she begged, her free hand reaching behind his head.
He smiled, his smoldering eyes starting to catch fire. "The lesson continues."
Anderton stood up on the porch, stepping to the railing. He stood there motionless, gazing down to the water's edge. His lips parted in a soundless sigh and his jaw sagged slightly.
The Mecha knelt before Agatha, between her slightly spread knees, facing her, with her arms already wound about his waist. He leaned his torso against hers, pushing her backward onto the sand as a wave rolled in over them. Agatha clasped him to her, their faces locking together in a deep kiss.
Anderton could bear it no longer; he dropped his gaze to the railing, his hands already gripping it.
Lara came up behind him and lifted his chin with a fingertip. "Don't want any flies to get in there," she teased, gently. He tried to smile, but he knew it looked as forced as it felt. "Hey, what's wrong?" she turned him to face her.
"Nothing, just tired from this last case," he said, half-truthful.
She looked him in the eye. "I think you're jealous."
He glanced down to the water's edge, not daring to look directly at Agatha and…that Mecha. "I'm not. If that's what she wants."
"I think you are."
"I never had any interest in her."
"It's not that kind of jealousy. You don't think I figured it out?"
"Figured what out?"
"You love her."
"I never did…I couldn't."
"No, not that kind of love. You're not acting like a jealous lover, you're acting like a concerned older brother looking out for his baby sister." She put a reassuring hand on his arm. "You have nothing to worry about her being with him. He's probably the best someone like her could manage. She's too different for most men, but he doesn't see that. All he can see is a beautiful woman who wants him."
"But why him? Why couldn't she find someone else…someone…?"
"Someone who's fully human? He's just a different kind of human." She pulled on his arm gently. "Come on inside. Let them have some privacy."
"That's what I'm afraid of," he said, with a last glance down the beach.
Some time later, after the sun had gone down and he and Lara had gone upstairs to their room, Anderton heard the porch door open and close.
The stairway creaked. Two sets of footsteps ascended, Agatha's and the Mecha's footsteps just behind hers.
Anderton got up and opened the bedroom door, peering out so that he couldn't be seen.
Joe led Agatha up the hall to her room. She paused in the strip of light cast by the open door at the head of the hallway, glancing around.
"What is it, Agatha?" he asked, facing her.
"I am afraid," she said.
He reached out with one hand and drew her to him. She kept her body clear of his.
"Of me? Of what I can do for you?"
"Yes."
"I cannot and will not hurt you," Joe said. "You have been hurt enough from a lack of affection for much too long. Let me fill this emptiness."
She put her hands on his. "Do this for me."
He drew her into the shadows. A door opened in the darkness. A light went on in the room. The two shadows moved against the light, Joe's tall slim one, Agatha's smaller one. The door closed behind them, blocking out the light.
Anderton closed the bedroom door and leaned his brow on it.
He felt Lara's hand on his shoulder, turning him around. "It's all right," she said. "She's in good hands, the best hands."
"But there's something missing," he said.
"I know. But she isn't to blame. She doesn't know any better, neither does he. Come on, it's getting late. Come to bed."
Later, as he lay in the dark, next to Lara, Anderton kept his ears open, listening to the night sounds, crickets trilling, a sleepy bird twittering outside, and from down the hall, an occasional creak of bedsprings or a delighted yelp. The racket slowly grew more constant.
Agatha's voice rose in a long wail of delight, growing higher and higher until it cracked. Then silence. A ripple of sound rose that might have been a soft sigh.
Anderton clenched his teeth, then his whole face, fighting the tears that slid from the corners of his eyes.
He slept lightly for the rest of the night, falling asleep and awakening every half hour, listening to the night sounds, wondering if Agatha and her consort were at it again, but silence hovered, broken only by the crickets and the soft waves outside.
Toward dawn, he ventured out into the hallway, partly to attend to nature, partly to check on their guests.
The door to Agatha's room stood slightly ajar. He nudged it open gently and peered into the room.
The gray light of early morning fell over the bed. Under the rumpled bedcovers, Joe lay on his side, his back to the door, screening something.
Anderton stepped closer. Joe stirred and propped himself higher, his elbow leaning gracefully on the pillows, and peered over his shoulder at Anderton, as if guarding the woman at his side. Agatha lay curled up beside him, her head against his chest, sleeping unconcernedly, her face at peace, but with a look Anderton had never seen on it before.
He stepped back and closed the door.
Agatha looked the same and yet utterly different when she came down for breakfast, with Joe at her heels. A light had been extinguished in her eyes and a new one kindled. Joe maintained his usual courtly decorum around her, but Anderton had a feeling the Mecha expected she might want more of him.
"The transport should be coming soon," Anderton said to Agatha, as she helped Lara clear the table.
"Where are you going?" Joe asked the younger woman.
Agatha looked at Anderton. "May I tell him?"
"Can you keep a secret, Joe?" Anderton asked.
"I can lock down that information," Joe said. With a proud little smile, he added, "No Orga can keep a secret the way a Mecha can."
At eleven that morning, a car came from the local CRF chapter headquarters. At the same time, another car, accompanied by two police cruisers, came for Agatha.
These two young creatures, abused and used by society in such different and so similar ways…strange circumstances had thrown them together, and now they would drawn apart just as suddenly.
Anderton remembered saying goodbye to Agatha and explaining, as briefly as he could, to Dr. Hineman what had happened. He remembered the CRF reps cordially welcoming Joe and thanking him (Anderton) for clearing Joe's name.
But in later years, recalling it, the parting seemed to have happened to someone else and he watched it as a spectator.
He never saw Joe again after that, but once a year at Christmas, they received a note crusted with Canadian stamps, in which Joe tastefully described the years' happenings.
Agatha's caretakers wanted to press charges against Anderton for helping her slip away from them, but when they heard how Agatha's vision had helped Anderton trace the trail of evidence Bevins had left behind, they dropped the charges. However, Rance reprimanded Anderton and Fletcher. Anderton expected further disciplinary action, but nothing further happened. Lara claimed that was the odd thing about small town justice: it was a two-eyed creature, but one of those eyes was sometimes blind.
Agatha still had her dream visions, still saw facets of other people's lives as they might be, but she no longer woke up terrified from witnessing a murder. More often she dreamt of Joe and his gallant adventures in his new life.
Once a year, on the 20th of May, she received a rush delivery package from Canada, always with an address that didn't seem to jive with the contents, except for those who knew.
Inside, as always, was a silver rose and a note, signed "Always with you, your J."
The End