Less Than Human Read online

  She’d never seen a factory accident that wasn’t due to human error. Someone had ignored barriers and warning signs. Or a maintenance technician tried to do too much.

  She picked up the beaker and paused the robot. It didn’t seem to be processing its sensory input efficiently. They had to do something about the reactions, and quickly. On the wall above the bench, an old-fashioned paper calendar showed a red circle drawn around next Tuesday. Her project was due to come before a budget committee that was looking for projects to ax.

  The hints she got from Akita offered some prospect of development in this area, but they didn’t have enough time to go back and redesign sensors. It was Saturday afternoon now, which didn’t even leave enough time to polish a different sequence. They’d have to stick with the walk-and-pick up, but maybe try something easier to grasp, like a soft toy.

  She patted the robot on its unwieldy head. It was just the right height to pat, about that of a five-year-old child.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  As Eleanor got out of the taxi a wall of heat hit her in the face. Gasping and squinting against the late-afternoon glare, she looked around. The taxi pulled away from a gate set in a two-meter wire fence. A metal plate set in the post beside the gate said KAWANISHI METALWORKS INC. EST. 1954. The whole area was full of large blocks of sprawling factories, and the air smelled thick and metallic. It smoked gold as the sun lowered.

  She rarely went outside these days, and certainly not in the heat of the day. Tomita Corporation was linked by rail to the Amagasaki Betta, where Eleanor and most of the researchers lived. Everyone used either subway or skyway connections. She hated being driven. It made her sweat with nervousness, even if the car was in autodrive.

  The taxi honked farewell at the end of the street. The driver, released by autodrive from the irksome task of actually watching the road, had talked to her constantly, demanding the usual personal information—where she came from, why she worked in Japan, whether she was married, how she learned Japanese, was her red hair a natural color, why was she carrying a tool kit and hard hat … Eleanor had exhausted her store of stock answers and was reduced to brusqueness.

  In a side street opposite the factory some of Osaka’s huge homeless population camped in lines of blue vineel tents. Nobody moved near the tents, which stood in the shade of the buildings. Everything else was gray concrete, baking in the heat. Osaka even looked gray from a distance—gray angles stretched from horizon to horizon, fading into a gray haze broken only by the immense, squat silhouettes of Bettas.

  The town always looked gray outside the Bettas. Eleanor could remember when nearly every street in Osaka was like this—dirty, colorless, treeless. The Great Tokyo Quake of 2006 had been a terrible thing, but life for ordinary Japanese had certainly improved afterward. Who wouldn’t prefer to live in a temperature- and humidity-controlled environment with autocleaning facilities? Not to mention the smart appliances. Total Interactive Environment, they called the Bettas.

  Eleanor wiped sweat clumsily from her upper lip with the hand that held her hard hat and wished she was home in her Betta. She could feel her fair skin frying.

  After the Quake, the government and big business had teamed up to initiate the Building for Life Plan, or “Seikai,” as it was commonly abbreviated, for the Japanese archipelago. No more unplanned, disaster-prone development. All Japanese would live in safe, self-contained minitowns connected to fast transport networks. Bettas, they called the huge complexes. A Betta Life for All. Which was fine in Tokyo, which had to be rebuilt from the sewers up anyway; but in Osaka, the Seikai plans had not progressed as far or as comprehensively. Bettas and the new train networks coexisted uneasily with remnants of the old city.

  The Kawanishi factory gate was latched, but not locked. There was an intercom unit set on one of the gateposts, but it remained silent when she announced herself. Inside the courtyard she could see a blue-and-white police car parked against a single-story building, and a uniformed policeman waited at the entry. He stared at her with official impassivity but his eyes registered every detail of her face, hair, and body.

  Sometimes she thought she didn’t care, but just then it fed her frustration. People never used to stare so much. Since the U.S. closed its borders and the European Union began to regulate foreign travel, white foreigners were as rare as when she’d first lived in Japan as a child.

  Eleanor inclined her head as much as she could be bothered in the heat. “I’m from Tomita Electronics Corporation,” she said. “The makers of the robot involved in the accident.”

  The constable’s round, red face dripped sweat as he nodded. That dark blue uniform must be stifling. “They’re expecting you.” He opened the steel door of the building.

  It was even hotter inside. Lights blazed along the ceiling, and the place stank of metal. A large poster on the wall next to the door showed a rotund blue cartoon cat brandishing a hard hat. Safety First Don’t Forget Your Helmet said the speech balloon. Eleanor settled hers onto her plait obediently.

  The ovenlike air was ridiculously nostalgic. Life had seemed simpler when she worked on industrial robots. It was easier to believe such robots made a difference to people’s lives. Eleanor had worked on an assembly line when she was a student, and, as far as she was concerned, the robots were welcome to it.

  The rows of machines were silent and still. Voices echoed at the other end of the floor. That glassed-in cubicle on the wall at the other end of the factory would be the control room. Banks of computer monitors were visible through the glass, and two men stood talking in front of it.

  One was portly and in his midforties, polo shirt and golf slacks incongruous with his hard-hat. The other was a younger man, midtwenties, wearing stained and crumpled overalls. They watched suspiciously as she approached.

  Eleanor bowed properly and proffered a business card. “My name is McGuire, of Tomita Electronics Corporation.”

  Gotoba started visibly. “Eh, you can speak Japanese.”

  One of these days, Eleanor thought, I’ll scream. And nobody will understand why.

  “I’m the supervisor of our robotics department in the research division. The department that developed your robot.” How useful formality could be.

  The portly man took her card and bowed grudgingly. “I’m Gotoba, floor manager here. This is Sakaki, one of our maintenance technicians.” Gotoba inclined his head at the young man in overalls. “He knew Mito. That’s the deceased,” he added, dropping his voice.

  Eleanor bowed again. “Manager, please accept our sincerest apologies.” Not that I think we did anything wrong, she was tempted to add. “We will, of course, remove the offending machine as soon as I have examined it for our records.”

  She glanced meaningfully at the tall, angular shape of the Tomita welder on the far side of the factory floor. Orange tape stretched around its workstation.

  “You’re going to examine it?” Gotoba said. He exchanged a glance with Sakaki, who looked down.

  “The machine is under extended warranty,” she said. In other words, if a design flaw caused the accident, Tomita was obliged to fix or replace it.

  “If you’ll excuse me.” Eleanor indicated her tool kit, bowed again, and walked with relief toward the robot. Behind her she heard a flurry of whispers, then Sakaki caught up with her.

  “Did you handle this robot?”

  Sakaki nodded. “I’m responsible for routine maintenance.”

  His tilted eyes squinted tighter, as if holding in some emotion. Maybe he’d been close to the dead man. Eleanor knew she should make a show of being more sympathetic, but she hadn’t known the dead man, and all she really wanted to do was get the initial examination over so she could go back and finish her own work. And, dammit, she’d forgotten to phone Masao and would have to wait till they got outside. The phone link would never work inside, with the electronic interference from the machines plus the shield for the factory network.

  “What sort of modifications have you
made?” All companies would revise any specifications that didn’t exactly meet their needs, but few of them consulted the manufacturer. “Have you adjusted the safety sensors in any way?”

  Sakaki shook his head. “We gradually widened the job parameters, but the safeties haven’t been touched.”

  Eleanor ducked under the orange tape, which was merely looped over peripherals. The welder stood beside the long bench that was its workstation, arm outstretched at the point the emergency stop function cut in, end-effector dangling forlornly. As far as she could see from a safe distance, the force of the blow had knocked the manipulator half-off, leaving some connective wiring exposed.

  Judging from the height of the arm at its stop position, the dead man had been standing when he was hit. There were chalk marks on the floor, just like in televid police dramas. The marks didn’t tell her much—unlike in the dramas, they didn’t form a neat outline, just a squiggle. The white chalk had mixed with dust to become orange.

  “Anyway, I don’t adjust the controller.” Sakaki stopped outside the tape. “I only do routine stuff. Check batteries and connections, keep an eye on accuracy ratings. You know.”

  There was no other sign of disturbance at the workstation. The peripherals—the positioners that fed the pieces onto the line and held them for the robot to weld—and the pieces themselves, waited for work to resume.

  “Your Japanese is really good,” he added shyly. “Better than mine.”

  Eleanor gritted her teeth and smiled through them.

  If nothing was wrong, why did Mito come inside the robot’s work envelope? The control panel was here on the perimeter if he wanted to adjust anything. The teach pendant with its portable stop button was in its place. Factories like this couldn’t afford the latest instruction software—they still relied on sims followed by teaching, like they’d done since the late nineties.

  But sensor-based safety measures had progressed since then, and why didn’t they function last night? Eleanor didn’t design robots in which you could turn every safety off. The operator was always protected.

  “Were there any tools nearby when they found him?” She glanced back at Sakaki.

  He met her eyes briefly then looked down. “No. But the controller was unlocked.”

  So Mito intended either to pause or adjust the robot’s program. Maybe so he could move into the work envelope. It should have stayed paused. Her robots didn’t have minds of their own.

  At least, she smiled to herself, thinking of Sam back at the lab, these ones don’t.

  Maybe Mito made a mistake, thought he’d disabled the robot properly, went to physically check something and got hit.

  Why didn’t he have his tool kit, then?

  “Was he a cautious kind of fellow?”

  Sakaki was staring at the blurred chalk marks, and she had to repeat herself before he heard properly.

  Sakaki paused and bit his lip. It wasn’t a fair question—for him to admit Mito was careless might be interpreted as admitting Mito was to blame for what happened.

  “He was very careful. He was a very serious fellow,” said Sakaki eventually.

  Eleanor sighed and turned back to the only real witness. The robot’s controller opened easily.

  “Uh-oh.” She frowned at the screen inside, where neat rows of code displayed the robot’s status. They bore out the hypothesis that Mito had adjusted the robot’s program, as normally the screen would be set at operator interface, in ordinary Japanese.

  The robot should have gone to emergency stop as soon as Mito breached the security devices. But it stood at halt. The police would have switched off the power as soon as the body was discovered, so the robot must have gone to halt after striking Mito.

  That, Eleanor told herself crossly, is impossible.

  As the police and their engineer were satisfied Mito’s death was an accident, all she had to do was add her stamp to the papers, and the whole thing would be over. The robot would be recalled and because it was an old model—nearly eight years out of date—it would either be scrapped or resold on the secondhand market.

  And she could get back to her budget committee preparations, never knowing why the robot went to halt instead of emergency stop.

  Sakaki caught her eye. “Excuse me, but I need to go and log in. I’ll be back soon.”

  “You’re on duty tonight?”

  He nodded. “Normally there are two of us, but everyone’s gone away for Bon.” They both averted their eyes awkwardly until Sakaki sidled away.

  She walked around the robot enclosure again, slowly, with half-closed eyes, plotting its arcs of possible movement from what she remembered of the program. Even the most experienced technicians can make mistakes, become too familiar with their charges. An industrial robot could be unpredictable. Signals from surrounding machinery and its own sensors could get scrambled; it might get confused by electronic noise from other robots, peripherals, neons, trains, and phones. All the new factories were noise-proofed, but you couldn’t expect that in a place this old.

  The problem was probably a glitch in the display. She unscrewed the casing and checked its wiring. Perfect. Not a glitch in the display, then.

  Nothing wrong with the physical safeties. All on a different power source to the robot, as specified. All active, as specified.

  She’d give herself one hour to find the answer. If she couldn’t find it, she’d get a train back to the office and forget about the whole thing.

  ISHIHARA

  Assistant Inspector Ishihara of Osaka Municipal Police slammed the car door. The automatic closing mechanism booped in outrage and he grinned. He preferred to shut his own doors, thank you.

  Saturday of the Bon weekend, and he had to go out in the heat. Why did he have to be on call during Bon? When he was a young constable, he’d been the one on call all holidays because the older men thought they’d earned the rest. Now they let the young ones with a family have the time off because otherwise they might quit the police force for a better civilian job. A niggling internal voice pointed out that if he’d had more time with his family when he was younger, he might still have a family, but he ignored it.

  Anyway, in three months it wouldn’t be his problem. Retirement loomed, an endless vista of formless days, and he was finding an obscure pleasure in the discomforts of duty that he would undoubtedly miss once he’d left.

  Dock loading zones and small factories covered most of the old harbor town. One skylink ran from the center of the city to the nearby harbor complex where big companies kept showrooms; around it clustered high-rise blocks of casual labor apartments, cheap diners and tiny bars, family factories-cum-homes, trodden dirt parks with dusty trees and outdated concrete play equipment. Not enough money around to attract big investors in entertainment like the gangster clans. A sense of community still clung here, unlike in the wretched Bettas.

  Damn, but it was hot.

  This factory was like those he remembered from his childhood in an industrial area of Fukuoka City. A big iron barn. Piles of scrap towered over a side fence. In a flower bed below a side window sunflowers grew tall against a neatly tied lattice of bamboo.

  Someone had been found dead in there, hit by an industrial robot. The medical report said dead between one to four hours. Security scans showed that nobody went in or came out. The man must have thought he’d turned the robot off but didn’t do it properly. At least someone else had been working over Bon. Ishihara just had to check the local police report and stamp it.

  The constable at the door of the factory stiffened to attention at the sight of Ishihara’s ID. He swiped it carefully in his phone to confirm and gave it back to Ishihara with a bow. His face was shiny with sweat, and an empty water bottle stood against the wall.

  Ishihara nodded by way of greeting. “Hot job out here.”

  The constable relaxed at Ishihara’s informal tone. “It’s the humidity that gets you. The manager’s gone to arrange the funeral,” he added. “There’s one technician overseeing
the floor. One of the maker’s engineers is still looking at the robot. She’s been in there over an hour.”

  “She?” Ishihara paused in straightening a cigarette from the half-crushed packet in his shirt pocket.

  The constable started to say something, changed his mind. “Yessir.”

  The engineer would want to make sure the manufacturer doesn’t get blamed, thought Ishihara. He’d check the scene. Never met a female robot engineer.

  He couldn’t see her at first. She must be over the other side, past that row of minicranes and ridged tabletops. All the machines silent and waiting. Enough to give anyone the creeps. He had to move right down one lane and back up another—there were no shortcuts across the floor. Sweat trickled down the middle of his back and into his underwear.

  The single figure near the robot didn’t notice him approach. She had her back to him and was looking from a flat box in her hand to an upright panel next to the robot. One hand tapped keys on the panel. Chalk marks inside the robot’s enclosure were nearly obliterated. It didn’t matter— the response team would have taken a video scan of the scene anyway.

  Quite an attractive figure. He’d been expecting plainness. Why? He expected women working in an all-male field to be there for a reason—they couldn’t compete with other women. Idiot, he heard his ex-wife’s voice in his head. You’re an ignorant dinosaur.

  Anyway, this figure was a pleasure to ogle. Reasonably tall, slim. Long legs in cotton trousers. Short-sleeved white blouse. It was the legs that gave her away. As he coughed, he knew even before she turned that Japanese women didn’t have legs that long. She wasn’t tall, then, not for a gaijin.

  She started in surprise and fumbled the box.

  Red hair, too. Long strands escaping from under the helmet. The skin under its sheen of sweat and smudges of grime was really white. Ishihara made a note to keep an eye on the constable, who’d refrained from blurting out the obvious. Tactful constables were rare.