Dixon walked with Brodie and Taylor as the two officers and the NCO took the lead. Taylor asked her, “What more can you tell us about Major Ames?”
Dixon thought a moment. “He was an intense sort of guy. And a bit of a lone wolf.”
Taylor asked, “He didn’t play well with others?”
“I wouldn’t say that. But he didn’t exactly lean on his team either. He was a brilliant mind but not a particularly good leader, which was supposed to be part of his role at the lab as the senior officer.”
Brodie asked, “Were you aware of his drug use?”
“No. But I wasn’t surprised when I learned about it. I knew he’d do night drives out into the desert. There was something… spiritual about him. At least, for a scientist.”
Brodie said, “Please explain.”
Dixon slowed her pace, and they fell back a little more from Howe, Spencer, and Mendez. “Can I be frank with you?”
Taylor looked at her. “That’s the only way we’ll have it, Ms. Dixon.”
“Caroline.”
“Maggie.” She nodded toward Brodie. “I call him a lot of names, but you can use Scott.”
Dixon smiled. This was nice. They were all on a first-name basis now, which was a way to build trust, or to soften someone up before you fed them bullshit.
Dixon said, “Roger was a computer scientist, not an engineer. He was very focused on advances in AI and, to be honest, disappointed with the lack of focus on that aspect of the D-17s. They are marvels of mechanical and electrical engineering, but they don’t have a lot of cognitive sophistication. That’s by design, and it’s all part of a roadmap. But Roger felt hemmed in. He wanted to push things further. One time he told me he believed that human consciousness could be synthetically replicated. It was simply a matter of the right programming and computational power.”
Taylor asked, “And what do you think of that?”
“I don’t have time to think of that, Maggie. I like to dream big too, but we have a job to do here.” She hesitated, then added, “Roger was ambitious, and he was impatient, and he was unorthodox. And I just can’t help but wonder if he didn’t engage in some extracurricular activities once he was alone in the lab.”
Taylor said, “You are implying he caused his own death.”
Dixon appeared uncomfortable with that characterization. “I’m not trying to lay blame. And if he did meddle with Number 20’s programming, then he somehow left no trace of it, either on his computer or within the unit’s processor. It doesn’t make any sense, and I can’t explain it. But if I’m being honest, I can imagine him doing something like that. Exploiting the opportunity presented by the bot’s malfunction to be alone in the lab with it, to… push the envelope.”
They walked in silence, and Brodie realized just how handicapped he and Taylor were on this case. If a criminal or negligent act had beencommitted here, it had happened at the level of computer code—a realm where Scott Brodie was deaf, dumb, and blind, and his intuition didn’t serve him. But he had to remind himself that investigations all have the same ingredients, as different as they might look on the outside. He and Taylor needed to focus on motive—and Caroline Dixon had just given them one for the murder victim himself—as well as opportunity. Only four people worked in the DEVCOM lab, and one of them was dead. The other three, as far as he knew, were the only people on this base capable of reprogramming the D-17s. So if thiswasa homicide, and someone had installed a few lines of killer code into Bucky’s processor, then Caroline Dixon was on a very short list of possible suspects.
He thought of Lieutenant Mike Lehner, the only member of the DEVCOM team they had yet to meet. He asked, “Where is Lieutenant Lehner?”
Dixon replied, “He’s probably following orders, which means he’s home.”
“How would you describe him?”
“Smart. Hardworking. The kind of person you want on your team. Ames and Spencer were computer scientists. Lehner is the robotics guy and is our liaison with Synotec for any questions or issues about how the D-17s were constructed, engineering choices made, parts used, et cetera.”
“Is he proficient in computer programming?”
She nodded. “Much more than the average person, much less than me, Ames, or Spencer.”
“What was his relationship with Major Ames?”
“Deferential. He admired him and respected the chain of command.”
“And how would you describe his attitude toward the work you were all doing here?”
“Like a kid getting the keys to the toy store. This is the ultimate assignment for a guy like him.”
“And a woman like you,” said Taylor.
Dixon looked at her. “Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. But I’m the magician. For me this is just another day at the office.”
