NO REST 4 WICKED BOTNIKS Chapter 1

Bobby Malone #1: No Rest For Old Detectives

Tyler B. Morrison

Aug 22, 2023

A Where the West Begins exclusive publication:

NO REST 4 WICKED BOTNIKS

A novel by Tyler B. Morrison.

Available for iOS and Android

PART ONE: Moscowtown Blues

NO REST 4 WICKED BOTNIKS

CHAPTER 1 Bobby Malone #1:

No Rest for Old Detectives

Bobby Malone tramped through the twisted alleyway’s glistening acid-rain drizzle. He ignored the menacing Stryker bot on his left guarding the sign and entryway to his right. Once he pushed the old metal-and-wood door ajar and closed it sharply behind him, Bobby adjusted his fedora to better survey the tacky neon gloom of the Rusty Schooner.

As a lead, the bar looked even less promising than the four others he already checked out tonight. This was the last dive on his list for Poison Oak Place. It stunk to high heaven of sweat, booze, smoke, and confusion. And this particular gin-joint was just a few blocks away from the corners of Murray and Fifth, where the bodies had actually dropped.

But Bobby was too short on cash and time to turn away now, even at 2:45 AM. He only had fifteen minutes until closing, but he would just have to make the best of it. He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and walked forward a few more feet.

When he came in, the first thing Bobby saw was his reflection. The long bright mirror stretched from behind the bar to half of the whole interior space. And in his own personal estimation, Bobby determined he looked like shit.

He was only about 5’9 or so, with about 275-280 pounds of bulk. He was trying to make it back down towards 260 or 250 or something. His gut was a bit large, to say the least.

Bobby had recently turned 44 years old, and what’s more, he was feeling it, deep down in his bones. His eyes were looking red and rheumy. He was wearing the marks of his long nights and his penchant for Kentucky bourbon and Texas smokes.

His face, while fat, was also pinched with many creases and worry lines over the eyebrows and around his nose and mouth. They made him look a decade older. And then there was his least favorite feature. He had a snubby, stubby nose, almost a bit like a pig’s, and he hated it.

Bobby Malone hid his face most of the time under the soft shadow of the fedora he now wore, bent at what he insisted was a cool angle. Man, he really would have to get in shape and pronto. Or else I’ll probably die, came the thought, unbidden.

Bobby owed two months’ rent for the office and his apartment, and he was also about due for a leg-breaking session from Abner and Bish. Or worse yet, maybe he’d get a visit from another nasty couple, new and gruesome. Perhaps some other charming brick walls employed by Mr. Hoyle would knock upon his door and not be so “polite.”

It was always a chance these days. His life was starting to sound like a cliched casino metaphor, a bad hand or a bitter crapshoot. Cliched or no, it was an apt metaphor.

A fondness for female company, a heavy drinking habit, and heavier gambling debts were all very expensive propositions. The cost hurt more than just his wallet. When the bills came due, they tended to injure other important areas as well.

The girls, the booze, the cards—they were really all the same racket, just like the real estate. Whether the streets were run by the Yakuza, the Nevada Bratva, the Vato Guapo Cartel, or the ever-present Natives, the money always flowed upstream. At the end of the night, it all wound up in the pockets of the Big Six. Welcome to NV City, the newest Vegas, the bright and shiny, dark and grimy trading hub connecting all of the Mojave nations. Welcome to the “Big Envy.”

Long story still kinda long, Bobby was in desperate need of funds and income: for his vices, for his habits, and for the roof over his head and business. It was all connected of course. He had found most things were, in his time as a PI.

So, after listening to Allimay Jackson’s sob story about her fiancé’s sudden demise in a drug deal gone wrong, Bobby took up her case and snatched up the cash at the first chance he got.

Truth be told, it was a meager sum. For all practical purposes, he was getting paid just above pro bono. But Allimay seemed like a charitable cause. And despite the evidence of past experience, Bobby found that he still had a soft heart beating somewhere in the neighborhood of his damaged liver. There was still that, at least.

Besides, when the hackneyed goons came to kick down his door, every little bit helped to delay a visit to the hospital. Or the morgue. There was that as well.

So here he was, on the wrong side of town, in the middle of the Zadnitsa at almost three in the morning on a not so relaxing Saturday. He had just walked into a dirty watering hole that was almost certainly a front for the Nevada Bratva. He knew it, and he had entered anyway.

The Zadnitsa at night, the worst part of Moscowtown

The Rusty Schooner was completely deserted—except for the second armored bouncer unit now blocking his way. It was a massive but outdated Golem model, Mark III or IV. The machine was rigged with a construction-grade hydraulic claw in place of a right hand, and a primitive rotary cannon in place of a left. Potentially, very dangerous. Bad botnik…

Bobby frowned.

The robot’s designers hadn’t even bothered to give the dome head on top of its broad chassis even the slightest resemblance of a human face. The botnik had no mouth, nose, or ears, nor even the vaguest impression of them. There was nothing so personable as all that.

It did, however, possess "eyes"—six orange-glowing photoreceptors that protruded out of snail-like independent stems. The short tubes and their bulbs revealed nothing of the machine’s processes or current intent. It was a little annoying, to say the least.

Those lights and their glow—that half-alive orange glow—made Bobby feel uneasy, more than a teentsy bit nervous. He wasn’t made anxious by the implicit threat of the botnik’s bullyish size, nor by the explicit threat of those overkill shooters and clamps. He’d seen worse, many times before.

It wasn’t like this was Bobby’s first time getting specked up by some jumbo weaponized rab. Hell, it had happened to him only a minute ago outside—the Stryker bot, etc. But no matter how many times he experienced it, he just never got used to being eyeballed by a machine that thought it was people.

Not that this one did, necessarily, think it was people. Bobby guessed that the botnik’s original processor was at least two or three decades old, and all the artificial intelligence contained therein was just that—artificial. Old news, old nuts and bolts.

For obvious reasons, a Golem model built to these specifications would be kept in constant slave-state. It would never be granted Synthetic Identity or anything even close to it. Even these days, even in the Wild West of Envy City, no manufacturer was dumb enough to give the capacity for self-awareness, much less original thought, to a bouncer unit whose sole purpose was engaging human targets. That shit just didn’t fly.

Then again, the machine was outfitted with not so subtle black market weaponry. The mods were by no means discreet, but they certainly looked expensive. And he was only seeing what was on the surface. There was just no telling what an experienced haberdasher might have cooked and rigged up inside that thick dome head. Almost anything was possible.

So Bobby decided to test the bouncer’s parameters with a little harmless chit-chat. He grinned, all glibness, doffed his fedora, and said, “How’s it going there, fridge?”

A pause. “Command not recognized,” a hollow, toneless voice boomed from deep within the botnik’s broad frame. The sound vents were near its ‘heart.’ Or rather, the lack thereof.

Bobby coughed out a laugh. Apparently, he had grossly overestimated the Golem’s AI. Definitely, definitely Mark III. Guess it wasn’t equipped with a 'sense of humor sensor,’ or a ‘Detect Slur’ function. Hardy-har.

“Stand down, Golem,” Bobby ordered, putting on a voice of real authority. “Move aside.”

Another pause. The botnik boomed out, “Invalid authorization! Confirm VIP status or exit the premises immediately.”

Bobby sighed. Fucking botniks…

Still wondering where the real staff was hiding, he stalled for time. “My name’s Robert Dority Quovadis Malone," he stated. It was the Gospel truth.

“And I'm expected here," Bobby added, lying.

The thing just kept on scanning him, each eyestalk shifting about in an asymmetrical, seemingly haphazard pattern. The orange lights made subtle, almost imperceptible changes in hue. The bulbs brightened at some points to a mustard yellow. Elsewhere, they darkened to deep orange coals, bordering on red embers.

After about ten more glacial seconds, its circuits must have finally come to some decision, a conclusion. The Golem-III took a giant step toward him and raised its armament halfway, not five feet from where Bobby stood. “Permissions not found.” Then it blared out in alarm, “Firearms Detected!”

Great. Just great. This was all he needed tonight.

This morning, this god-awful, god-forsaken morning. 2:40-something AM in the fuckin Zadnitsa. This dump was probably a dead end, and it might just be the dead end of him. Bobby was starting to feel those Moscowtown Blues.***

CASSIE woke herself up from sleep mode and considered waking the Maker. But the poor kid was still enjoying his hibernation time: the one single night without any electronics in his holo-capsule bed. She decided to let him sleep on for a little while longer.

Instead she tracked the BPN’s TIN code for “Bouncer 2 - Golem III - issued by Volgatech, and Property of NB.” The TIN number was “919-649-88-4621.” With the backdoor installed, she did it all instantly.

That one dumb machine was about to kill a living, breathing human being without cause. Those were not the protocols the Maker had installed. Those were not his instructions at all.

The Maker needed sleep, yes…

But she might have to wake him up soon.

Very soon. Very, very, very soon.

END OF CHAPTER 1