TITLE: "Along a Knife's Blade" An "A.I." / "Blade Runner" crossover -- Chapter Three: Subject
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Merrot's Voight-Kampff test yields many unsettling results.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. Nor do I own "Blade Runner", it's characters, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: I'm not sure if I have the Voight-Kampff Machine just right, since I seem to have cross-bred the device from the movie with the device as Philip K. Dick imagined it. If anyone knows where I can find a photo of the gadget from the movie, could you point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Chapter Three: Subject
Diane awakened next morning with the image of her dreams still hovering in her mind's eye: a deer running through a forest, unseen hunters pursuing her. Dogs rushing out of the bushes, barking and snapping at the deer's heels. A shot ringing out.... She always awakened as the deer's body jerked in mid-bound, the bullet striking it... The therapist she'd seen told her the dream was probably symbolic of the time when she had been accidently shot during training at the police academy, and the resulting flesh wound, otherwise non-life-threatening, that had gotten infected... The therapist had gone on to say that the dogs probably symbolized a fear of being hedged in by the males that dominated the profession Diane had chosen, but Diane had set this information aside. She never felt threatened by her male superiors and peers. Maybe Bryant acted condescending at times, and Gaff annoyed her with his feeble attempts at witty flirtation, and Resch acted high-and-mighty around her, but she always managed to disconnect herself from whatever feelings of annoyance this behaviour induced in her.
Later that morning, she went back to Merrot's apartment, carrying a case containing a VK unit she'd picked up at headquarters. The security AI informed her that Merrot was in, but that he wasn't receiving visitors just yet.
"Did he say when he would be free?" Diane asked.
"He is at work in his photography studio just now," Teresa replied.
"When he's finished, could you tell him Diane Fletcher came to see him?" She held up the business card with her cell phone number, in front of Teresa's visual receptor.
"I will tell him," the security AI replied.
Diane went back down to her skimmer and settled into the front seat, listening to the talk radio station, waiting this out, waiting for Merrot to call her. Gaff would have hung around and most likely have made the security AI suspicious. Resch would have picked the lock, spooked Merrot and nearly gotten himself arrested for illegal entry. Or worse: she didn't doubt that Merrot had a sophisticated defense system in that apartment, which Resch's breaking in might have triggered.
Her cellphone twittered. She plugged it into the dashboard vidphone and answered it. "Fletcher," she replied, as the screen lit up with Merrot's image.
"Madame Fletcher, I just got your message. Forgive me for not taking it sooner; I'm at your disposal if you're ready to come up now."
"Yes, just give me a few moments; I'm on my way up."
"I'll be waiting by the door for your arrival," Merrot said, his eyes narrowed a little, studying something.
She hung up the phone and checked the settings on the video feed. She could have sworn she'd disabled the feed on her end so that it couldn't possibly transmit out, though it could receive transmissions.
When she arrived at Merrot's door, he opened it to her even before she knocked on it.
"I'm terribly sorry for the delay," Merrot said, stepping back, admitting her. "I had a deadline to meet, finishing some still-lifes for a client."
"You're a photographer?" she asked.
"Yes... I see you must have peered into my work room when you first came here," he said this with a trace of a gentle, almost teasing scold.
"It's part of my job," she said, shrugging.
He closed the door behind her. "So... what brings you back here?"
She set her case on the floor. "INS wants me to run a Voight-Kampff test on you. It'll only take a few minutes."
"Ah... and what is this test meant to determine?"
"I'll be reading off several descriptions of emotionally-charged scenarios. You have to tell me how it would make you feel. At the same time, I'll be running an Voight-Kampff device which will measure your fine physical reactions to the scenarios: blushing, dilation or contraction of the pupils of your eyes. Just to see if you're fully human or not."
One corner of his mouth twitched a little, threatening to turn into a smirk, His face relaxed too quickly for her to pin down what it meant. "Very well," he said. And he drew up a chair to a table under a window, not seating himself on the other until she had sat down and set to work unpacking the machine, attaching the long arm for the iris scanner.
"Can we dim the windows in here?" she asked, turning on the machine. The bellows sighed, raising and lowering itself as
"Of course," he said. He reached for a control panel under the windowsill and dimmed the window glass to it's darkest setting. The only light now came from the iris-scanner.
"Can you look right into the light, please?" Diane said.
He shifted in his chair, centering himself. "Is this better?"
"Yes, thanks..." She glanced at the list of questions on a pad before her: she'd done this so many times, she almost knew them by heart. ""You're walking in a desert, Harlen... There's a tortoise crawling toward you... It's flipped over onto it's back somehow... It lies there helpless, it's belly baking in the sun..."
"No, I'd turn the poor thing over before it suffered any more." Merrot's pupils constricted and the corners of his eyes grew moist. The machine crackled, the needles on the dials facing Diane swung to the right, but she noticed their movement delayed.....
"You're reading a magazine... There's a two-page spread photo of a naked young man lying on a bearskin rug.... You show the picture to your wife. She rolls her eyes at it, but later you find she's clipped it out and hung it up on the wall in her computer room."
Merrot smirked, his eyes narrowing just a little, his pupils dilating. "Are you trying to determine if I'm a passer or if my tastes swing both ways?" he asked, bantering. He relaxed his face. "If that's what she wants, though I'd rather be all she needs." The needles on the dials swung, delayed.....
"You're watching a stage play... A banquet scene is in progress. The guests are eating raw oysters.... The main course is boiled dog."
He moistened his lips hungrily with the tip of his tongue at the mention of the oysters, but his pupils constricted and his skin temperature dropped when she mentioned the dog. "First my mouth waters, now I'm nauseous," he said....
"You're given a calf-skin wallet as a birthday present."
"Eh, I do have a bit of a leather fetish, but with all the near-extinctions, I'd exchange it for a synthetic substitute." The needle palpitated, then swung, too late....
"You're sitting in your living room, watching television. A wasp lands on your wrist."
"I'd flick it off carefully." The needle moved, two seconds too late.
"It stings you."
"Now that would annoy me and I'd end up swatting it." His pupils dilated, too slowly....
"You promise to marry a woman you love. She becomes pregnant by you. But when she finds out you had an affair with another woman, she has an abortion."
His eyes threatened to drop their gaze into his lap, sadly. "I'd try to reason with her, obtain the necessary papers, find a family to adopt the child... But if she went through with it...." His eyes had grown moist, his pupils constricting. The needles swung wide, but the movement came too late....
"Describe to me in single words only the good things that come to mind about: Your mother."
He shook his head. "I never knew her. She left me to die when she gave birth to me." He bent his head, looking away, but his skin temperature had dropped and she noticed moisture in his eyes.
That explained the Jane Doe on his file. "It's all right," Diane said. "You've answered enough of the questions." She hit a button on the printer hooked up to the device and let the printout churn out.
"Madame Fletcher, may I ask you a question?" Merrot asked, recovering his usual smirky self-composure.
"Of course, I've asked you enough questions."
He looked directly at her, his face relaxed but serious. "Have you ever taken this test?"
She almost laughed. "No. It's not really necessary."
He gave her a thin smile whose meaning she couldn't read. Then he peered at her through the lens of the iris reader. "I would think the INS would be a little more careful. The ARM could have planted a passer among the applicants for Rogue Retrieval. Jane Sutter and Katya Rukowski at Cybertronics worked on a contraversial project in conjunction with the Tyrell Corporation: building Or-Mechs who thought they were human and letting them merge with society. If one of these Or-Mechs made some misstep and inadvertantly caused some trouble, who's to say the ARM wouldn't yell Frankenstein? ...I'm sorry if I'm rambling... I've been interested in AI rights, since my father was a proponent of them in the Europan Empire."
"You seem to know a lot about the more covert activities among AI researchers."
He straightened up, looking at her. "My father also had a degree in AI design. He kept up to date with what was going on in the field."
She could see where he was going with this. "It's possible, but it's highly unlikely."
He shrugged. "It might be worth your consideration, but it is for you to decide."
"Either Merrot is a passer, or he's a human who's been treated for schizoid tendencies," Diane said, handing a copy of the report to Bryant. "I can't figure it out."
Bryant read the report, his brow furrowing, eyebrows crinkling and relaxing. At length, he sighed haggardly and tossed the report onto the desktop. "There's only one way to figure him out: try picking him up. If he resists, he's a skin-job. If he doesn't, he's human."
Diane reached for the briefcase at her feet. She took out the VK device and set it up.
"Di, what the hell are you doing?!" Bryant demanded, one eybrow lowering, puzzled.
"When they hired me, weren't they supposed to have me tested?"
"Yeah, to see if you're sane enough to serve."
"Have you taken a VK?"
Her supervisor glared at her. "Don't be an ass."
She turned the machine around so that the light from the iris reader shown into her own left eye as she looked into the business end of the lens.
"I'm testing a male subject... I can't tell if he's a human or a passer, but I have to admit to myself, he's very polite and charming... But he asks me a personal question: whether or not I've taken a VK test myself.... I find that question annoying at first, but it leaves me puzzled why he would ask that and what it might mean to me personally..."
Bryant studied the dials. "Damn."
"What?"
"It took you a couple secs before your eyes reacted." He looked up at her, holding his hands open disarmingly. "Look. You're too damn good at what you do. I won't tell the department if you don't tell."
"And say the ARM finds out. What happens if I shoot a suspect in self-defense and that suspect turns out to be human? What then?"
"Internal affairs would investigate, I'd cover you, they'd clear your case. End of story."
She shook her head. "There has to be some file somewhere about me. IA would prove I'm an Or-Mech and the ARM would lap it up. They'd castigate the Police Association for letting killer robots work with the force."
"They've been yellin' about robots doin' X, Y, and Z work for years. Hotel work, factory work, police work, sex work; just swap the names around, it makes no difference."
"What's to stop them from grabbing me and putting me on the Circuit if something goes wrong?" Diane cut in.
"I won't let 'em, not if I can help it. I'll have Resch watch your back."
"No. I'll finish out this job, then I'm leaving Retrieval."
Bryant's bulldog face crinkled with worry. "What'll you do then?"
"I'll be finding out who I really am," she said, reaching for her jacket and slinging it on as she headed out.
"You be careful out there, girl," Bryant called to the back of her head.
To be continued....
AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"
RATING: PG-13
ARCHIVE: Permission granted
FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?
SUMMARY: Merrot's Voight-Kampff test yields many unsettling results.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. Nor do I own "Blade Runner", it's characters, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Warner Brothers, et al.
NOTES: I'm not sure if I have the Voight-Kampff Machine just right, since I seem to have cross-bred the device from the movie with the device as Philip K. Dick imagined it. If anyone knows where I can find a photo of the gadget from the movie, could you point me in the right direction? Thanks!
Chapter Three: Subject
Diane awakened next morning with the image of her dreams still hovering in her mind's eye: a deer running through a forest, unseen hunters pursuing her. Dogs rushing out of the bushes, barking and snapping at the deer's heels. A shot ringing out.... She always awakened as the deer's body jerked in mid-bound, the bullet striking it... The therapist she'd seen told her the dream was probably symbolic of the time when she had been accidently shot during training at the police academy, and the resulting flesh wound, otherwise non-life-threatening, that had gotten infected... The therapist had gone on to say that the dogs probably symbolized a fear of being hedged in by the males that dominated the profession Diane had chosen, but Diane had set this information aside. She never felt threatened by her male superiors and peers. Maybe Bryant acted condescending at times, and Gaff annoyed her with his feeble attempts at witty flirtation, and Resch acted high-and-mighty around her, but she always managed to disconnect herself from whatever feelings of annoyance this behaviour induced in her.
Later that morning, she went back to Merrot's apartment, carrying a case containing a VK unit she'd picked up at headquarters. The security AI informed her that Merrot was in, but that he wasn't receiving visitors just yet.
"Did he say when he would be free?" Diane asked.
"He is at work in his photography studio just now," Teresa replied.
"When he's finished, could you tell him Diane Fletcher came to see him?" She held up the business card with her cell phone number, in front of Teresa's visual receptor.
"I will tell him," the security AI replied.
Diane went back down to her skimmer and settled into the front seat, listening to the talk radio station, waiting this out, waiting for Merrot to call her. Gaff would have hung around and most likely have made the security AI suspicious. Resch would have picked the lock, spooked Merrot and nearly gotten himself arrested for illegal entry. Or worse: she didn't doubt that Merrot had a sophisticated defense system in that apartment, which Resch's breaking in might have triggered.
Her cellphone twittered. She plugged it into the dashboard vidphone and answered it. "Fletcher," she replied, as the screen lit up with Merrot's image.
"Madame Fletcher, I just got your message. Forgive me for not taking it sooner; I'm at your disposal if you're ready to come up now."
"Yes, just give me a few moments; I'm on my way up."
"I'll be waiting by the door for your arrival," Merrot said, his eyes narrowed a little, studying something.
She hung up the phone and checked the settings on the video feed. She could have sworn she'd disabled the feed on her end so that it couldn't possibly transmit out, though it could receive transmissions.
When she arrived at Merrot's door, he opened it to her even before she knocked on it.
"I'm terribly sorry for the delay," Merrot said, stepping back, admitting her. "I had a deadline to meet, finishing some still-lifes for a client."
"You're a photographer?" she asked.
"Yes... I see you must have peered into my work room when you first came here," he said this with a trace of a gentle, almost teasing scold.
"It's part of my job," she said, shrugging.
He closed the door behind her. "So... what brings you back here?"
She set her case on the floor. "INS wants me to run a Voight-Kampff test on you. It'll only take a few minutes."
"Ah... and what is this test meant to determine?"
"I'll be reading off several descriptions of emotionally-charged scenarios. You have to tell me how it would make you feel. At the same time, I'll be running an Voight-Kampff device which will measure your fine physical reactions to the scenarios: blushing, dilation or contraction of the pupils of your eyes. Just to see if you're fully human or not."
One corner of his mouth twitched a little, threatening to turn into a smirk, His face relaxed too quickly for her to pin down what it meant. "Very well," he said. And he drew up a chair to a table under a window, not seating himself on the other until she had sat down and set to work unpacking the machine, attaching the long arm for the iris scanner.
"Can we dim the windows in here?" she asked, turning on the machine. The bellows sighed, raising and lowering itself as
"Of course," he said. He reached for a control panel under the windowsill and dimmed the window glass to it's darkest setting. The only light now came from the iris-scanner.
"Can you look right into the light, please?" Diane said.
He shifted in his chair, centering himself. "Is this better?"
"Yes, thanks..." She glanced at the list of questions on a pad before her: she'd done this so many times, she almost knew them by heart. ""You're walking in a desert, Harlen... There's a tortoise crawling toward you... It's flipped over onto it's back somehow... It lies there helpless, it's belly baking in the sun..."
"No, I'd turn the poor thing over before it suffered any more." Merrot's pupils constricted and the corners of his eyes grew moist. The machine crackled, the needles on the dials facing Diane swung to the right, but she noticed their movement delayed.....
"You're reading a magazine... There's a two-page spread photo of a naked young man lying on a bearskin rug.... You show the picture to your wife. She rolls her eyes at it, but later you find she's clipped it out and hung it up on the wall in her computer room."
Merrot smirked, his eyes narrowing just a little, his pupils dilating. "Are you trying to determine if I'm a passer or if my tastes swing both ways?" he asked, bantering. He relaxed his face. "If that's what she wants, though I'd rather be all she needs." The needles on the dials swung, delayed.....
"You're watching a stage play... A banquet scene is in progress. The guests are eating raw oysters.... The main course is boiled dog."
He moistened his lips hungrily with the tip of his tongue at the mention of the oysters, but his pupils constricted and his skin temperature dropped when she mentioned the dog. "First my mouth waters, now I'm nauseous," he said....
"You're given a calf-skin wallet as a birthday present."
"Eh, I do have a bit of a leather fetish, but with all the near-extinctions, I'd exchange it for a synthetic substitute." The needle palpitated, then swung, too late....
"You're sitting in your living room, watching television. A wasp lands on your wrist."
"I'd flick it off carefully." The needle moved, two seconds too late.
"It stings you."
"Now that would annoy me and I'd end up swatting it." His pupils dilated, too slowly....
"You promise to marry a woman you love. She becomes pregnant by you. But when she finds out you had an affair with another woman, she has an abortion."
His eyes threatened to drop their gaze into his lap, sadly. "I'd try to reason with her, obtain the necessary papers, find a family to adopt the child... But if she went through with it...." His eyes had grown moist, his pupils constricting. The needles swung wide, but the movement came too late....
"Describe to me in single words only the good things that come to mind about: Your mother."
He shook his head. "I never knew her. She left me to die when she gave birth to me." He bent his head, looking away, but his skin temperature had dropped and she noticed moisture in his eyes.
That explained the Jane Doe on his file. "It's all right," Diane said. "You've answered enough of the questions." She hit a button on the printer hooked up to the device and let the printout churn out.
"Madame Fletcher, may I ask you a question?" Merrot asked, recovering his usual smirky self-composure.
"Of course, I've asked you enough questions."
He looked directly at her, his face relaxed but serious. "Have you ever taken this test?"
She almost laughed. "No. It's not really necessary."
He gave her a thin smile whose meaning she couldn't read. Then he peered at her through the lens of the iris reader. "I would think the INS would be a little more careful. The ARM could have planted a passer among the applicants for Rogue Retrieval. Jane Sutter and Katya Rukowski at Cybertronics worked on a contraversial project in conjunction with the Tyrell Corporation: building Or-Mechs who thought they were human and letting them merge with society. If one of these Or-Mechs made some misstep and inadvertantly caused some trouble, who's to say the ARM wouldn't yell Frankenstein? ...I'm sorry if I'm rambling... I've been interested in AI rights, since my father was a proponent of them in the Europan Empire."
"You seem to know a lot about the more covert activities among AI researchers."
He straightened up, looking at her. "My father also had a degree in AI design. He kept up to date with what was going on in the field."
She could see where he was going with this. "It's possible, but it's highly unlikely."
He shrugged. "It might be worth your consideration, but it is for you to decide."
"Either Merrot is a passer, or he's a human who's been treated for schizoid tendencies," Diane said, handing a copy of the report to Bryant. "I can't figure it out."
Bryant read the report, his brow furrowing, eyebrows crinkling and relaxing. At length, he sighed haggardly and tossed the report onto the desktop. "There's only one way to figure him out: try picking him up. If he resists, he's a skin-job. If he doesn't, he's human."
Diane reached for the briefcase at her feet. She took out the VK device and set it up.
"Di, what the hell are you doing?!" Bryant demanded, one eybrow lowering, puzzled.
"When they hired me, weren't they supposed to have me tested?"
"Yeah, to see if you're sane enough to serve."
"Have you taken a VK?"
Her supervisor glared at her. "Don't be an ass."
She turned the machine around so that the light from the iris reader shown into her own left eye as she looked into the business end of the lens.
"I'm testing a male subject... I can't tell if he's a human or a passer, but I have to admit to myself, he's very polite and charming... But he asks me a personal question: whether or not I've taken a VK test myself.... I find that question annoying at first, but it leaves me puzzled why he would ask that and what it might mean to me personally..."
Bryant studied the dials. "Damn."
"What?"
"It took you a couple secs before your eyes reacted." He looked up at her, holding his hands open disarmingly. "Look. You're too damn good at what you do. I won't tell the department if you don't tell."
"And say the ARM finds out. What happens if I shoot a suspect in self-defense and that suspect turns out to be human? What then?"
"Internal affairs would investigate, I'd cover you, they'd clear your case. End of story."
She shook her head. "There has to be some file somewhere about me. IA would prove I'm an Or-Mech and the ARM would lap it up. They'd castigate the Police Association for letting killer robots work with the force."
"They've been yellin' about robots doin' X, Y, and Z work for years. Hotel work, factory work, police work, sex work; just swap the names around, it makes no difference."
"What's to stop them from grabbing me and putting me on the Circuit if something goes wrong?" Diane cut in.
"I won't let 'em, not if I can help it. I'll have Resch watch your back."
"No. I'll finish out this job, then I'm leaving Retrieval."
Bryant's bulldog face crinkled with worry. "What'll you do then?"
"I'll be finding out who I really am," she said, reaching for her jacket and slinging it on as she headed out.
"You be careful out there, girl," Bryant called to the back of her head.
To be continued....
