Unclaimed Property

2048

Every year, for the past eleven years, I’ve been the proud recipient of a discreetly worded attaboy. I don’t have to go upstairs to the stately conference room or the governor’s office to get it. The bosses voc it down to me in the third sub-basement of the Capitol building. If you want to contact me in my official capacity, you need to look for my name, Louis Cochrane, buried in the fine print at the bottom of page 89 of the Delaware State Directory. My department is lucrative and quietly celebrated, a branch of the Delaware State Tax Bureau, the Delaware Abandoned Property Unit. I’m in a footnote. Use a magnifying glass.
We do not find the owners of abandoned property, nor is it our responsibility to reunite people with their misplaced and misremembered stuff. The first rule is Finders Keepers.
We had one, and only one, guiding principle, the golden rule: Keep turning a profit. As long as that happens, everybody upstairs is your friend.
When I say we, I mean myself, Bernard, my field operative, and my good right hand, Sylvie, my accountant. We always did our best, and we liked to start every day with some screen time to stay in touch.
Our last official job turned out to be an abandoned warehouse on Lafferty Lane. I vocalled Bernard to meet me. When the van pulled up and parked itself, I vocced the side door and stepped back. Bernard weighed 410 pounds, and woke up like a bear coming out of hibernation. We call him Bear or Big B. He slept in his motor pool van to avoid paying rent on a can.
“Time to go to work, B.”
“Ahgahha.”
On that day, he woke up grumpy as usual. When he slept, he snored loud enough to peel paint. Some of his tools had slid off the shelves in the van. I helped him put them back in their places.
I pinned my badge to the chest plate of my flak suit and told Bernard to bring some pineapples. He pinned three stunners to his vest. “Helmets?”
“Why not?!” I wasn’t expecting any problems, but it’s always best to be prepared.
B got the bolt cutters, a pry bar, and a persuader out of the boot.
The locks were no problem, but the door was swollen shut in the frame. Bernard went to work with the pry bar and the persuader. He had the front door open in less than 30 seconds. I waited outside until he stowed the tools. While I waited, I listened. I didn’t hear anything. That was good. I yelled “City Services!” which was a lie and got no response. We stepped cautiously across the threshold. Power to the building had been shut off, and it was dark. “Lights and 360 camera,” I said, and when my spot came on, I surveyed the lobby area. There were dust motes floating in the air. “The envirovacs are down.” We both said “Respirators,” and waited while our Venturi masks sealed in place.
The offices and the security booth were empty, nothing but dusty trash, scattered paperwork, and a refrigerator in the break room. Bernard asked if I was hungry. “You go ahead.”
“I’ll pass.” Neither one of us wanted to open that refrigerator. The contents would be radioactively toxic by now. If we found anything of value, Bernard would ratchet-strap the door closed and haul it away.
We went through the waiting room towards the door leading to the warehouse bays, on record as 25,000 square feet. We didn’t go in right away. We listened.
Nothing.
“Ready!?”
“Ready.” Electronics were disabled, so I operated the doorknob manually and pushed the door aside. It squeaked on its rusty hinges. Bernard said, “Jesus!” and grabbed my shoulder. What we saw, startled me, too, 12 pairs of eyes, 12 people sitting silently and staring at us. Bernard, who suffers from ptsd from the Second Civil War, screamed, threw a pineapple, and ran out of the building. Bernard had been moving fast for a big man. The shock wave blew me backwards and knocked me out.
When I came to, I picked myself up and staggered back to the warehouse door. Most of the bodies had landed on the concrete floor, but none of them were moving. I checked an old man, a young woman, and three children for vital signs. Their eyes were still open, but they had no pulse, and none of them were breathing.
***

Bernard wanted to voc 911 or drive away like we had never been there. I tried to calm him down. “They aren’t dead. They aren’t even human. They’re androids, indistinguishable, high-end, and, most importantly, valuable.”
I left Bernard to re-secure the front door and went back to the office. Sylvie, as usual, was not at her desk, most likely hanging out with Doris who managed the transports in the garage. I vocced her and asked her to double-check her initial report on the warehouse at Lafferty Lane. She said, “I already told you. Completely dormant for six months now.”
“Do we know why?” She sounded irritated but said she’d get back to me, and an hour later she did.
“They’re all dead. The warehouse belonged to Hon Hai Delaware, a subsidiary of Hon Hai Taiwan. Quantum Nexus tells me Hon Hai Taiwan is in receivership. The owners, major shareholders, and key employees drowned last year. A 9.2 earthquake in the Indian Ocean triggered a massive tsunami. The Seychelles Islands went underwater. A hundred-fifty-thousand people died. Man, those people picked the worst possible time and place for a company retreat.”
I asked her to contact the owners of the warehouse and offer them two months’ back rent and a new month-to-month contract going forward. “Make sure they understand. No matter what, the content of the warehouse now belongs to the state of Delaware.”
***

Once the new rental agreement had been completed, Sylvie and I went to the warehouse to do the inventory. It took us two days to complete. The warehouse on Lafferty Lane contained: 35 50-gallon barrels of polystyrene beads, 13 400-pound rolls of elastic netting, 500 pounds of foam rubber, 25 50-gallon barrels of polyurethane, 15 50-gallon barrels of room temperature vulcanized silicone, 10 50-gallon barrels of fumed silica, 6 50-gallon barrels of liquid plaster, 3 milling machines, 750 mechanical actuators, 6,432 pneumatic actuators, 1,234 tiny hydraulic devices in various sizes and configuration, 8,987 miniature electrical components, 2,431 microchips, 7,655 steel and titanium rods in a variety of sizes and with couplings on both ends, 300 rolls of steel and titanium wire of various gauges, 1.76 tons of aluminum chips, two smelters, 7 600-gallon vats of liquified plastic, 3.6 tons of balsa wood, 400 gallons of liquified acrylic, 550 gallons of grade 74 pre-vulcanized latex, 3 tons of foam latex, 200 gallons of dye in various colors, 7 moulding machines, 3 vacuum chambers, 15 computers, 12 charging stations, and 12 electrically powered androids with a shielded nuclear unit for power boosting: six appearing as females and six as males, four septagenarians, four middle-aged, and four children, a cross-section of ethnicities. They could easily have been two or three family groups with the ethnic mixing so typical of our time.
Whatever the plans had been for these androids, teenagers were not required, but, then again, what real purpose do teenagers really serve?
The androids were clearly made right there in the warehouse, but manufacturing had ceased after the first twelve. They had moved on to the testing phase.
I needed to assess the real value of the droids. I told Sylvie to sell everything except the computers, the charging stations, and the androids at ten cents on the dollar. We could have held out for more, but our main objective, at the time, was to start clearing this off the books and move on to the next job.
***

The three of us agreed the androids must have been part of an elaborate spy plot of some kind, but all the human spies were dead. We didn’t see any reason to blame the bots; and, if we reported our suspicions, the blue coats would swoop in and confiscate everything. “Let them get their own unclaimed property,” I said.
We got the lights on and the AC pumping, leaving everything in place. My first problem was to hack into the network. Of the 15 computers, the least likely one turned out to be the most valuable to me. It was a dust-covered machine sitting on the bottom shelf of the janitor’s closet.
I needed some help from The Core, AKA The Dark Web. I paid Faithless Samaritan to track down the former janitor and get his password. When Samaritan had a location, I left a packet of cash in a garbage can beside a park bench at midnight. It turned out, the password was Ralphie after the janitor’s schnauzer. That’s how I got in.
All the droids had names and histories. Of the four presenting as children, we started working with the smallest and youngest one, Mattie, a Caucasian boy who looked to be about eight. His history revealed him to be part of a family of four. The warehouse had an observation room with thick glass panels. Mattie was heavy, and it took two of us to move the dead weight before activation. Bernard and I dragged Mattie to a charging unit. The next day, we fired him up.
Mattie remained seated, but moved his head slightly to assess his surroundings. “Mattie?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what day it is?”
“Of course! Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No, I apologize, but what day is it?”
“Thursday.” His internal clock was functional.
“April the second?”
“2048 in case you’ve forgotten.” I made a note that Mattie had been programmed to exhibit a somewhat snide demeanor like many eight-year-olds. We talked for half an hour. Overall, Mattie came across as engaging and willing to please. I could see why someone might get attached to him.
Bernard and I used a forklift to move the others while Sylvie activated all twelve by turns from the computers so we could assess their functionality. They all presented as pleasant, forth-coming, and generally optimistic. All the adults had a rye sense of humor. I asked Sylvie if the computers had any performance data, and they did. They could remain animated for nine to ten hours, longer if they were not required to perform strenuous activity.
They had been sent out on test runs to assess their capabilities and verify they were completely indistinguishable. Sylvie learned they had played a lot of pickleball. “Apparently, they were too damn good at it. People at the pickleball courts were starting to notice, so they had been re-programmed to miss more shots.”
Gert, one of the two older women had organized and run a bingo parlor. I had Gert voc apologies to the players for suddenly disappearing. The players had been wondering where she had gone. Two of them wanted her to re-start the games.
Ben and Sara had co-coached a coed Little League team, The Rippers. The Rippers were in the play-offs under new leadership, and the league administrator had been trying to get in touch with Ben and Sara. Two of the droid kids had been on the team, and the league administrator said they had been missed.
Myra had been a bank teller.
Alfredo was a scratch pool player.
They were all good at cards. I can tell you it’s a blow to your ego when your android partner insults your ability to make good decisions in a card game.
An older, Asian looking android, Tamagauchi, had been doing janitorial work. I put Tamagauchi to work cleaning up the place. He put on a blue work apron with a lot of pockets for his cleaning products and went right to work. Tamagauchi was moving so fast it looked like a streak of blue light. In just over an hour, the warehouse was spotless.
***

At first, one of us had to be there to open up the warehouse whenever a buyer’s work crew came, but after we got the androids up and running, I sometimes let one of them supervise the pick-ups.
One day Bernard pinged me from the Short Hills Golf Club. “Hey B, I thought you were working at Lafferty Lane.”
“I was, but Jamalee is helping me with my short game.” Jamalee was a young adult android of predominantly Africanized complexion. “You told me to assess their capabilities. Anyway, I called you because I need your help.”
I said, “On screen,” and widened the viewing angle. Bernard and Jamalee were sitting in a golf cart in the shade under a Live Oak. Jamalee wasn’t moving. It was wearing the default thousand-mile stare.
“He must not have been fully charged. He’s completely out of juice, and he weighs more than I do.”
“With no fat, whatsoever.”
“Yeah. Fortunately, he was sitting in the cart when he shut down. I’m going to need some help getting him back in the van.”
“I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
***

On a Friday night after work last month Find Friends told me Bernard and Sylvie were still at the warehouse. They were still there at 11:30 PM, so I took a transport over. They were drinking white Russians and playing gin rummy with two bots named Ben and Sara. They were drunk, the humans I mean.
I broke the card game up, but before Sylvie deactivated Ben, she leaned close and whispered in his ear. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Darling.”
“Did you just call that bot Darling?” She denied it, but I know what I heard.
***
In retrospect, I should have known something was up when the daughter of the governor’s third cousin started hanging around the office asking questions about the operation. When she and I were alone in the break room, she criticized the hours Sylvie spent with Doris in the motor pool and Bernard’s sleeping arrangement in the van. I thought she was just being anal.
We were spending so much time with the androids our productivity admittedly did go down. I didn’t get my customary attaboy at the annual budget meeting that month. The CFO said, “You’re slipping, Louis. Do I need to send the Efficiency Squad downstairs to go over you and your operation?” Nobody wants the Efficiency Squad gumming up the works. I promised to do better.
A week later, Bernard, Sylvie, and I all got our pink slips. Just like a football team in the NFL with a losing record, somebody upstairs had decided it was time for a change.
***

As I was packing up my desk, I vocalled the team for one last pep talk. I made sure I was available on their screens. I said we should finish the job strong even if we were getting a raw deal. They agreed.
Then I asked Sylvie what was left of the Lafferty Lane inventory that needed to be disposed of. She was, at first, surprised, because we both knew very well what was left. “Just the computers, the charging stations, and the androids,” she said.
“How many?”
She looked at me like I might be losing my mind. “Twelve.”
“I thought it was nine,” I said, giving her a wink and a slow nod. At first the consternation on her face only increased, but she did slowly come around to what I was driving at. “I’ll take care of it,” she said and signed off.
I asked Bernard to meet me with the van at Lafferty Lane.
***

Golfing was good for Bernard. He was losing some weight. We took Jamalee and a charging station to the new can Bernard had rented.
We dropped Ben at Sylvie’s place.
I held out Sara for myself. In the evenings, after a glass of wine, Sara and I climb into the Hover Flow. She claims she doesn’t have a favorite program. I like to fly through animated Alpine mountains and in and around the rooftops of mountain villages. For my soundtrack, I like to add some Bartók or any of the eighteenth-century rock and roll, instrumentals, no lyrics, and no distractions.
I reminded Bernard and Sylvie that our new friends were capable of just about anything, but they already knew that.
While looking through the want adds, I saw the Delaware Abandoned Property unit would be hiring someone. I’m pretty sure Sara will get the job. She’s perfect, super capable, and never tired. I’d hire her.