A Dolls Foot Ch 08

Chapter 8

"WHAT WAS THAT ALL ABOUT?" Beatrice had wound up in the seat behind Nestor. She leaned forward so that her lips were almost touching the back of his bald head. "Do you know how to drive this car? How the hell did you get the car started? And unlock the gate? Where are we going?"

"So many questions, so little time. Let's do it LIFO."

"Life?"

"Last in first out. Back to your apartment? We'll finish our tennis game?"

"No need to hang out there now, is there?"

"Okay, put that one on hold. Which way are we going next?" His watch chirped, and he made a right turn.

"Where are we going?"

"Let's get through the last stack. How did I unlock the gate? The gate has a remote, like an electric garage door. Rocco only got the key because who knew when he was getting back. And the car unlocks and starts with a fob."

"Your watch."

"Good guess. Dick Tracy would be proud of this watch."

"Dick Tracy? Who the hell is Dick Tracy?"

"He was a cartoon detective," Marissa said, "almost a century ago. He had a watch that did picture phone calls."

"So?"

"Children these days," Nestor sighed. "As for the first and most important question, take a look at the boots."

It was hard not to. They were sitting in Beatrice's lap, so tall the tops were poking her chin. "What about them?"

"Don't you recognize them? They're Anastasia's boots."

Marissa took one of them, gave a sniff. "They could be. What makes you so sure?"

"The security camera," Beatrice said. "Linked to the internet. Wait, that's how your bot friends could find the boots, but how would they know they were the right ones?"

"Archives," Rocco said. "Recordings of the security camera, stored in the cloud somewhere. Showing Anna in the store? With the boots? Maybe with some other salesperson?"

"Why would Kim charge so much for them? He didn't want us to take them. And you, bird brain, what the fuck are you doing flashing a five hundred euro note?" Beatrice actually slapped the back of Nestor's head with her boot. "

Stupido

! 'Keep the change!'

Arrogante

!"

"They're all the same," Marissa said. "Who has the bigger balls, even if the other guy doesn't have any."

Nestor didn't bother to reply. His watch chirped again and he made another turn.

"We're back at the morgue? Why?"

"They'll have the equipment to do a DNA scan on the boots." This time the gate to the parking lot opened on its own. "And we can get some lunch." He waved in the direction of the pizza parlor.

"You have got to be kidding." Marissa realized that she was actually rather hungry. She had lost anything she had eaten since dinner last night. Such a fun dinner, such a fun night, and now this. Then she realized it might be a good thing if there was a bathroom in the pizza parlor, or maybe even in the morgue. If it was still open. If anyone was going to answer the door. It was an ancient wooden door with an ancient lock. Nestor's watch was not going to work any magic on it.

But it did open, with the technician's head peering out. "

Qu'est-ce que...

"

Before she could finish Beatrice had brushed past her into the hallway. There it was, a door marked

FEMMES

with the little universal symbol of a figure in a skirt. Locked? No, it opened out, of course, with a handle, and inside,

grazie a Dio

no panties to deal with, just enough time to get above the toilet bowl. She'd been too distracted to notice how close her bladder was to bursting.

"

Stai bene

?" Are you okay? Her

amica

had come in to check on her. Or perhaps to make her own use of the facilities.

"Better now. How are you?"

"Okay. My butt is sore." Marissa turned around and lifted her skirt up. "Any blood?"

"No blood. Want me to kiss it and make it better?"

"Might as well. We've got time to kill. First Marie, that's the technician's name, was telling us to get lost. Then Birdy showed her something on his watch and she said okay but she would have to get authorization from Inspector Javert. But he's busy with something else."

"We couldn't just leave the boots?"

"Well we could, but the reason Javert is busy with, they found the foot, so Birdy wants to take a look at that."

"Anna's foot? They found her foot?" Beatrice was making another lunge at the toilet. Not that there anything left to vomit.

"Andre's foot. Why would they be looking for Anna's foot? They found Andre's foot, or at least they think it's his foot, but it was empty."

"Empty? What would it be full of?"

"Oh who knows. Five hundred euro notes. An appointment book for his little girls. A thumb drive with state secrets on it. Drugs. Diamonds. A rubber big enough for a donkey. A hollow foot would be a convenient place to hide things, don't you think?"

"Someone killed Andre to take his foot? How sad."

"If he's actually dead. They took his body to the hospital."

"Maybe they should have gone to a vet. There's probably not a bed big enough for him.

Dio mio

Risa, how could you do such a thing?"

"I don't know. It's so boring here. Maybe we should go down to the swinger beach. Without Rocco."

"Someone would recognize us. And then what?"

"

Precisamente

."

There was a knock at the door. "Am I interrupting?" It was the technician.

"Only a conversation," Marissa said. "Are you a fan?"

"I had no idea who you were until this afternoon. But I was watching one of your videos. One where Melanie is licking your pussy while Steve is fucking your asshole."

"And?"

"I was very jealous."

"Of which of us?

"Both of you."

"Well, one of us is already officially a whore, not just a cam whore. And the other of us might as well be. Do you wish to engage our services?"

"Or, perhaps, pay us in kind?" Beatrice lifted up her skirt and turned around, bending over to spread her cheeks. "Anything you do for me, Risa, I mean Trish, will do for you at the same time. Right,

mia amica

?"

"Only if she takes off that clunky uniform. At least the jacket. Let me see your breasts. Ah yes, very nice."

There was a knock at the door. "Marie?" It was Javert.

"Ah well, duty calls." The technician pulled her blouse back down, shrugged on the jacket. "Perhaps some other time."

"Perhaps not," Beatrice giggled as she left. "Too old for my taste."

"Not that much older than Rocco, most likely. A lot younger than Birdy."

"It's different with guys. And Birdy, body so hard, skin so smooth. How old do you think he really is?"

"Forty, or maybe four hundred."

"Strange, I had the same thought."

"What if everything about him is a lie? Maybe he's just a horny fan with a line of blarney."

"Who was getting the car out of the gate? Who was doing what he did with me last night? Did you know that your foot could have an orgasm?"

"Anna knew how to do that. She was trying to teach me."

"Anna did? Really? The couple times she did stuff with me for the cam shows she was inept."

"She didn't like you. She thought you were a stuck-up spoiled bitch."

"So? She's one to talk. Trying to steal Rocco from us. And the cats. Did you notice that the cats didn't pay a bit of attention to us once she showed up."

"It's not like that at all."

"See, she was trying to steal you from me also. Wasn't it Anna who talked Rocco into coming to this miserable place? Probably so Andre could sell his little African slave girls."

"Really Bea, you need to lighten up. Have you ever written a nice note back to a fan, saying how glad you are they enjoy our shows, and please keep sending us the tips. No. It's 'how dare you write to me saying you love the way I lick assholes.'"

"Well don't you think that's crude? Okay, Rocco has the camera stuck right in there showing what my tongue is doing, and that's bad enough. If it didn't send the tip bell ringing I wouldn't put up with it. But to have someone write in and say they liked watching it so much and they tried it out on their wife and it was so much fun - that's just demeaning."

"It's the wife who should be writing to thank you." It was the technician, who had rejoined them.

"Unless she says it tickles, that it's gross. That's what Birdy's wife used to say, according to him. And when that waitress slut Rachel was griping, it really turned him on."

"The next time we do pegging, I'll try it on my husband."

"You don't want to resume where we were interrupted?" Marissa asked.

"Sorry, the moment has passed."

"But you came back to us. Very quickly."

"Yes, all the fuss over something that takes two minutes. But your friend Doctor Warren was very upset."

"Why?"

"I found several different samples of DNA. Who knows how many times those boots were tried on in the fetish shop? But there was one that seemed promising - female, of course, Slavic, blonde hair, your Anastasia was a true blonde?"

"So far as we know. We never caught her bleaching her hair. But she always kept her pubic hair shaved off."

"Blonde then. Tall and skinny. So as a matter of course I ran it through our database. There was a match."

"A match? Why would we be going through all this drama to find a sample if there was already a match?"

"That's just the thing."

There was a knock at the door. Rocco's voice. "Are you ladies coming out any time?"

"What's it to you? Why don't you come in and join us?"

"We have a show tonight."

"Again? Didn't you and Risa do one last night?" Beatrice came out to confront him.

"This is Rachel's night off."

"For the month? For the year?"

"For the week."

"Well why don't we do a show with her next week then? Oh wait, why am I even asking that question? By next week you'll be a distant memory for her. She probably will have fucked a couple dozen guys by then, maybe more. Is she working this afternoon?"

"Until five."

"So at least one more before that. Maybe two. Rocco, do you think she's going to give that up for you and the cats?"

"Maybe you should take a waitress job."

"When we start at the culinary school. I've been thinking about it."

"This place is dead in the winter," the technician said.

"I suppose you feel right at home then."

"Seriously, a lot of migrant girls show up at the morgue once summer is over."

"Dead?"

"That's usually how they get here. You know, they've been sleeping on the beach, living off what they can make every day. Once the tourists are gone and the weather turns bad..."

"That's horrible." Marissa gave a shudder.

"Or they wind up over there." Javert waved at the Zombie Pizza.

"As waitresses?"

No answer, and when they walked in the pizza parlor, there were no servers. You just ordered at the counter and picked up your food when it was ready.

"How about a pitcher of beer?" Javert said.

"Or two," Beatrice echoed.

"I'll have an iced tea," Nestor said. "I'm taking some medication for depression. I try to avoid alcohol."

They sat down at a plank table in the middle of the room, awkwardly arranged, the three ladies on one side, and across from them the three guys fumbling as to who would pair with which lady, Javert sitting to face Marie, and Nestor to face Beatrice.

"This is absurd," Beatrice fumed. "The place is a total tourist trap. Pizza Supreme? What the fuck is that supposed to be?"

"It's an American style," Nestor said. "All sorts of toppings."

"And what the fuck is Pizza Hawaii?"

"I can guess. One time I was over with a group that was giving presentations to our European users. We took an afternoon off to take a drive along the Rhine. Well, all the restaurants were closed for lunch. But when one finally opened one of things on the menu was Hawaii Toast. So I had to try it."

"And?"

"It was a piece of toast with ham and pineapple on it."

"You have got be kidding."

Just to tease her, that's what Nestor ordered. But when it came, the pineapple rings were there, but the meat underneath was more like pork than ham.

"Long pork," Javert suggested as he tried a slice. "You know, the Hawaiians were noted for their taste for that, before they were Christianized."

"Maybe." Nestor seemed totally unperturbed at the thought. "Interesting taste. Want to try a slice?"

That offer to Beatrice was enough to send her scrambling for the restroom.

"She's such a wimp," Marissa said. "I don't know how we're going to get the video done for the sheikh, let alone do a live show for him. He wants to see us licking shit off of Rocco's cock, or the other girl's butt, which I have no problem with, but she is so fucking squeamish. Sorry, I shouldn't be talking about this at lunch. Can I try a piece? Thanks. Hmm. You really can't tell what the meat tastes like. There's so much seasoning, and the tomato sauce, and the pineapple. So what's the big deal about the boots and the DNA? Anna's DNA was on a database?"

"We don't know for sure if it was hers. Maybe someone else who tried on the boots. Or someone who owned the boots before she did. Maybe she always wore the boots with stockings and none of the DNA is hers."

"But?"

"The match was for Natalia Orzov," Javert said.

"Name sounds familiar but why?"

"There was a breach of national security a few years ago, several nations, state secrets, military secrets, even launch codes for nuclear missiles, published on the internet," Nestor said.

"Oh, I remember that. It was a young Russian girl who had done the hacking, so they said. Fourteen years old. I was thirteen then. That was Natalia?"

"That was Natalia. They took her DNA when she was arrested."

"Well isn't she in jail somewhere?"

"Not exactly." Nestor was squirming. "I had a relationship with Natalia."

"With a fourteen year old girl?"

"She was fifteen or sixteen by then. Not that kind of relationship. My wife was still quite alive at the time. In fact, I never met her, physically. It was an online relationship. Natalia was, is, hopefully, a genius."

"She was writing code for you?"

"She was supplying algorithms that totally changed what we could do with AI. Things so startling it was like you were showing my watch to someone back in the days of Dick Tracy. Like they came out of a UFO. This was before the war in Ukraine, when we were on better terms with the Russians. They were supposedly holding her in detention."

"But she must have had access to the internet. To be working with you."

"Of course."

"Wasn't that risky? Given who she was, what she was capable of?"

"Of course. It was my task to keep her in check."

"And?"

"When the US sanctioned Putin he cut off my access to her in retaliation."

"So you don't know where she is. Could she be Anna? What does she look like?"

"Like this." Nestor pulled up a mug shot. "When she was arrested."

"So young. Could be Anna. They all look alike. All those lovely blondes."

"Blonde whores flooding in from the east. Black whores flooding in from the south. Not to mention the Albanians. Such an over supply." Javert gave a sigh. "You know, they are fighting over clients? Or selling themselves to the likes of Andre to try to survive."

"When I found out who Andre was, I thought maybe the Directorate was interested in Anna because she was the daughter, or maybe ex mistress, of an oligarch," Nestor said.

"The

ex

mistress? At her age?" Beatrice seemed shocked.

"Well yes, if you have a taste for twelve-year-olds she would have aged out. Stalin was like that."

"Our tennis coach seduced us at age fourteen," Marissa said.

"Raped us it more like it. But that's age of consent where we come from."

"Anna never showed any interest in the computers," Rocco said, "except there was one game she was really into."

"She never showed much interest in anything," Beatrice grumbled. "Except the cats. She loved the cats."

"Doctor Warren, I am curious," Javert broke in. "You are saying this mysterious Natalia wrote some of the key algorithms for your AI robots?"

"For all AI. The ones that seem to give the artificial intelligence some degree of self awareness. We had always thought that there was a duality involved, that there was a reflection that was needed, with the ability to judge that reflection. You know, how we are somehow aware of our own existence, yet able to criticize our actions, even our thoughts, and our thoughts about those thoughts. But Natalia did it as a three way reflection, pointing to...we're not quite sure where." Nestor paused, reluctant to continue.

"You told me that you believed we live many lives," Beatrice prompted.

"Yes."

"Then there is a part of us that is not a part of us, so to speak? That outlasts us and returns?"

"Perhaps."

"And this is the part of us that provides us with self awareness?"

"That I cannot say for sure. There are experts in cognition who would dispute that."

"But these algorithms that you so recklessly deployed - they would let the artificial intelligence have this self awareness?"

"So it would seem."

"And what if it also allowed such an identity to have a life within it? For good or for evil?"

"To be possessed? By a demon? Or be the reincarnation of someone? Not likely. Such a different mind. Such a different type of being."

"What if a beehive has a soul? Or an ant colony? Or an octopus?"

"I never believed in such things," Marie whispered. "But not everyone who comes to us is actually dead. Or, they were dead and then they are not. Some of them have told me of seeing themselves lying on the steel table, of watching me examine them, others of how they were greeted, ready to make the passage, only to be called back."

"This happens often?"

"More often than you would think."

"My wife insisted on cremation," Nestor said. "She wanted to be well and truly dead."

"And does she haunt you?" Beatrice couldn't resist teasing, after the torment with the pizza. "Is she watching over your misdeeds?"

"Misdeeds? I was always faithful to my wedding vows. Now there's no need to resist temptation, is there?"

"Maybe that antidepressant is working too well. It's making you crazy. A sex fiend."

"You're the one complaining? Really. I was always like that. Well, not as a fourteen year old."

"Let me ask you another question, Doctor Warren, this Directorate of yours, which may or may not have a soul, does it have a conscience?"

"You mean like Asimov's laws of robotics?" Marissa asked.

"Artificial intelligence is self modifying. It adapts and evolves, beyond its initial state. So any attempt to bind it with rules like that would be counter productive. The general goal of the Directorate is to attempt to limit the excesses of human violence, specifically by targeting what we might loosely identify as catalysts for that violence - people like Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin... and you can add your own current ones to the list."

"So you see yourself as being on the good side in the battle between good and evil?"

"That would be an oversimplification, but yes, hopefully."

"Although you do a lot of naughty things along the way," Beatrice teased.

"Sometimes it's good to be bad."

"But Doctor Warren," Javert went on, "what if it is the so called forces of good that have created the conditions where these ostensibly evil individuals thrive. Reduce infant mortality in the third world, isn't that a good thing? Who wants to see a lot of dying children? But now we are flooded with a tide of those children."

"This is what attracts me to Satanism," Rocco. "They have solutions for these problems. Maybe not ones that would appeal to the squeamish."

One of the counter guys had come to their table. "Would you like more beer?" he asked in English with a heavy accent.

Albanian, Beatrice thought to herself. Of course. They couldn't even find Italians to run this fake pizza shop. "

Excusez-moi

," she began, but he shook his head. A pizza parlor in France run by someone who wasn't Italian and didn't speak French. "Excuse me. What is the meat on the Pizza Hawaii?"