Fingers of Orion

"That's why I love the arm. It's just so flexible, so rapid and fluid. It's just great. I don't really have to think, it's like having an actual arm." With a slow deliberate movement, he picked up the glass of water from the nearby table and sipped it. Replacing it swiftly, the muscular twenty year old man smiled with his shining white teeth. He was a poster boy, the one who pushed up the sales, and he did a very good job of it. While prosthetic limbs were a limited market, it made it even more imperative that they go all out with the sales. A starting company like Maniple had to work hard to sell their arms and legs to the limited market. They brought the new ideas, a fresh team of researchers. It worked, and their sales were up, as far as they could go with such a market.

Detective Richard Prolowski watched the extended ad, amused but tired. The Polish immigrant didn't enjoy the life in Nova York, but what average man did. He was Polish, blue eyed, brown haired, with a love for Joseph Konrad novels. Now it was almost eleven o'clock at night, and he was watching ads on the television. Nothing like slacking off on the job. The Police office, the 1930's sorta office, with the hardwood desks, large cabinets, pens, light pens, pencils, tablets and some collapsable monitors, it was all humming with activity, late night drunks just beginning to filter in, either found on the streets or more disturbingly in cars. Prostitutes were also appearing, along with drug dealers, gun dealers, and everything else illegal that grew in the moonlight. Nova York wasn't the best place to live, but like the namesake city on Earth, it was the panorama of life. The rich hot shots, in their suits and hover cars that zoomed above the lower city. The middle class, living with the artist, actors, and others who enjoyed life. The lower and rotting class, the ones who did drugs and refused treatment, the ones who sold themselves to the devils of their religion, immoral peoples. Disgusting, but ever since the Bronx City Riots, the sweeps of the lower class areas were less common, and Richard didn't care that much. He was the Robotics Detective. Despite all the cautionary tales from Asimov on, the robots were everywhere. While they were simply drones, told to do this, that, and whatever else by human controllers, the ghost coded ones were there. Those whose code was broken, like a genetic mutation. They were with the lower class, living only because they can, using scrap parts to put themselves back together. Some were almost 100 years old, others relative newbies. Some lived in underground opulence, with massive mechanical bodies, others were scavengers of CPU's and hard drives.

"Prolowski, I hate to ask why your not at your desk." Chief Garry Tumlot was a tall African, muscular with low cut hair and a short goatee.
"I was just thinking about the 'Robots against Humanity' movement. The crap they give us for inventing them. Talk about a Frankenstein."
"Yea, well what can you do? We can't EMP the city, or it'll wipe out the stock brokers lights while he enjoys those 'immoral pleasures' you preach against."
Nodding, Prolowski turned away from the television and returned to his desk. It was true that they could've EMP the city. That would shut down all the bot's from the highest towers to the lowest sewer. It would also kill all communication thoughout the city, and that sorta crap wasn't appreciated at all levels.
"Prolowski, I've got a job for you. I don't enjoy blathering, so I'll cut to the chase. 2 dead in the Guards Armory. They had their necks snapped, and it was quick. We think RAH (Robots against Humanity) were responsible. One had his circuitry fried, the other disappeared. What'da ya think?"
Chief Tumlot appeared before Prolowski's desk, laying the folder down after he finished the talk.
"I think it's a job for the newbie detectives, not some professional. I've got... work to do." Prolowski nodded to the empty filing tray.
"You don't have any work and you know it. Take it, or get stuck with Captain Purdue and his 'Arms Truck', picking up the militants and robot renegades." That was the ultimate suck job, the one where the militants knew the cops had 'arms trucks' and stayed away, the robots hating humans.
"I'll take the case."