Cold Sushi

Tyrell

"Mr. Tyrell," Decker ask. "So good of you to finally join us?"

Nodding slightly, I step forward more into the room. That said, I still must say I’d rather did not expect this kind of behavior from ‘Deckard’. Perhaps something went wrong with the "remediation" session?

"Mr. Deckard," Rachael says sharply. "It’s Dr. Eldon Tyrell!"

Deckard gives Rachael a withering look and glances back at me.

"Sir, with all due respect I am assuming that you’re a busy man," Deckard then says in a surprisingly respectful voice. "Time is money and all that. Time is business. Same with me. Replicants to track and kill, you know! I had been told that after I use the machine on test subject I would be able to get more info on the targets? Is this . . . ?"

He jerks his head back towards Rachael.

"She is to be a subject but I wanted to see a negative before I see a positive," I explain.

He gives me a fishy stare and, rolling his eyes throws up his hands as if giving in. Hm.

"Okay, fine," he sighs, chuckling slightly. "We’ll see a . . . negative before a positive!"

"At least the prelim prep work wasn’t a total waste," I hear him mutter.

Prelim work? What the devil is that supposed to . . .

. . . .

Oh my! It’s so obvious now . . .

"See Mr. Deckard, I told you I wasn’t a Rep . . . " Rachael begins, a note of triumph in her voice as she rises from where she’d been sitting.

"SIT!" Deckard shouts, harsh voice bouncing off the walls (and driving a surprised Rachael back into her seat). "Do not leave until after the test and not a second before!"

"Is this to be an empathy test?" I ask after I cough a little be in embarrassment. "Capillary dilation of the so-called blush response? Fluctuation of the pupil? Involuntary dilation of the iris?"

"Yes," Deckard says, still setting up the rather alien (and somewhat unnerving) looking readout machinery. "We call it Voigt-Kampff for short."

I see! And from what I had heard of that test plays into the rather beastly behavior he’d been displaying towards Rachael. Would also explain the rather harsh looking test equipment as well.

Deckard finishing, then rises and looks around the spot where Rachael is sitting on the other end of the table (fuming).

"It's too bright in here," Deckard sighs. Glancing over at me and tilting his head he seems to be making a silent request.

"Easily enough handled," I say, poking a button on a small remote control I have on my person. The window changes shade, letting less light in and making Deckard smile and mouthing the word "thanks" towards me.

"Do you mind if I smoke?" Rachael asks Deckard, pulling out a cigarette and lighter before answering. She’s left holding nothing to light when Deckard casually yanks the unlit cigarette from her hand and crushes it into a mess on the floor.

"Yes, I do," he says softly. "While it won't affect the test, it’ll affect me. Breath in enough junk outside into my lungs as it is, damnit. Don’t need to go into the hospital for a replacement set any sooner than I’d like, all the same."

No rest for the weary, I see . . .

"All right," he continues in a calmer voice when he seats himself back opposite of poor Rachael. "I'm going to ask you a series of questions.

"Just relax and answer them as simply as you can," that part is said with a smirk. He’d deliberately made Rachael as unrelaxed as he could have. "It's your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet."

It’s a rather longish battery of questions like those that Rachael gets asked. By the end she’s almost back to her cool and collected self, but I can see that there is a little more than a bit of resentment at how Deckard has treated her.

Yes, a longish list of questions but I have a dismayed feeling that it’s not as long as I’d hoped. Meaning that I fear that Deckard knows what Rachael actually is, protests to the contrary by her (and me).

Indeed, I fear he’d KNOWN even before he’d started.

How?!

While fuming over that, Deckard finishes up with a REALLY jarring statement which causes him to nod and smile a little bit in surmise after checking the readouts.

He’d deliberately shocked Rachael (and ME to be honest) by first showing off his leather bound briefcase and then (out of the blue) stated it was made from 100% human baby skin!

What in the HELL?

. . .

Yes, I know why he’d done it and that he’d done it rather well. It’s just the sheer . . . .cold bloodedness of it.

. . .

I am seriously reconsidering the merits of this little experiment, really, now. But that said I do believe that at least for the moment our Mr. Decker here is still a good "asset" to help track down and retire his former comrades.

Least Decker could do for me, considering the liability he’d been before . . .

As for Rachael being a Replicant, him appearing to know ahead of time . . .

Ask him as much after Rachael had been dismissed so we could speak in private and he’d revealed the results of the test . . .

It went something like this . . .

"Would you step out for a few moments, Rachael?" I ask her. She stands rather stiffly and nods. "Thank you."

She marches off, fuming still at Deckard. Can’t say I really blame her, Replicant or not!

"She's a Replicant, isn't she?" the Bladerunner asks in a manner that really is more statement than question.

"I'm impressed," I sigh, actually in a dull, tired fashion really being the case. What the Hell was wrong with Rachael that had given her away so quickly?! Did I and my research team have to come up with a Nexus 7 so soon? "So, what gave her away? You seemed to have known right straight away even before humoring me with making her take that test."

Deckard chuckles softly and shakes his head slightly.

"I didn’t know for sure," he sighs. "It’s only that it was the most likely thing."

Elrondir

"Pardon?" Tyrell blinks. "I. . . don’t understand. The most likely thing?"

"Mr. Tyrell," I say softly, explaining. "You’re man successful both in business and science. Busy with running a business AND in the creation of new lines of replicants in a . . .quest to create a servant that is ‘more human than human’. Yet you yourself took time out from your busy schedule to see a lowly cop, Bladerunner or not? No, gotta be some kind of angle besides mere courtesy. You could have had me briefed and all that by some junior executive. Therefore, you came down here to witness . . . free of charge . . . no lab setup needed and no company equipment tied up . . . me trying to see how effective your latest generation of Replicants are. See if I could be fooled."

"Oh," he blinks, perking up.

Yeah, can see that he’d been bummed out at the thought that his latest ‘toyline’ was buggy. "So it wasn’t Rachael who tipped you off . . . it was . . . me?"

"Yep," I nod. "Sorta like chess and poker, really."

Tilting his head at that rather odd statement, he gestures to make me explain.

"Sir, I’m not a chess player," I say. "Bores the Hell out of me. Too sterile for those like me, though there are those out there who love it and swear up and down by it. Power to them for that, BUT the thing here is that while I’d make a crappy chess player . . . I play a mean game of poker. Have the face for it so as to not tip my hand!"

Give him my best poker face to emphasize the point. Tyrell slowly nods, seeing the point.

"So you’re saying I tipped my hand," he says softly, slightly disturbed at that.

He then shakes it off, continuing.

"That said . . . how many questions does it usually take to spot them?" he asks me, eagerly. "Replicants, that is."

"Twenty, thirty, cross-referenced under the normal tract," I say, pointing to a spot in a manual I pulled from a pocket. "Half that with the express tract I took. Not recommended if you want to be friendly with the questionee afterwards if it’s a negative, but sure as hell gets results faster!"

His eyes widen even more behind those glasses of his when he reads the part about the very last surprise question I’d shocked Rachael with.

"They actually have people say that in the Bladerunner section?" he blinks, pointing.

"To get an emotional response in case the session is proving to be inconclusive," I admit. "But that’s mild compared to some of the stuff in the back here like. . ."

I make like as to flip to the back of the booklet to show him. Tyrell blanches, waving me off. Do believe that he’s rather wanting to drop this line of questioning. Good, because there really isn’t anything back there in the booklet!

Just wanted to knock that smug look off his face . . .

Again, quickly composing himself he rallies.

"Since it took more than that for Rachael it would have taken . . . more than a hundred for her on the ‘regular tract’, right?"

"That’s right," I say, acting like I don’t know where this is going. "Your point?"

"Commerce, is our goal here at Tyrell," he says with a slightly smug look on his face. "More human than human is our motto."

"Kinda heard that in the elevators," I quip, interrupting. He goes on, ignoring me.

"Rachael is an experiment," he says. "Nothing more. We began to recognize in them strange obsessions. After all they are emotional inexperienced with only a few years in which to store up the experiences which you and I take for granted. If we give them the past we create a cushion or pillow for their emotions and consequently we can control them better."

Yep, it is just like in the movie. It would be a logical course to take, considering the fun they’d been having beforehand with those like Roy and his bunch. Yes, I know that, but still I’ve got a part to play . . .

"You're talking about memories," I say mildly, then acting surprised as I continue. "She doesn't know?!"

"She's beginning to suspect, I think." Tyrell confides, smiling a warm smile. A warmth like a fairy tale dragon would give off . . . . Bastard.

"Anything else special about Rachael I should be told?" I ask. "Something that I should expect when/if I should decide to take up your companies . . . generous offer to relocate to the colonies out there? You know, what I should expect from the next Replicant I’ll be forced to buy after the ‘free’ one I’d been given kicks the bucket after six years?"

Wonder how many people got suckered by that deal? Finding themselves shorthanded and needing new hands, how much in debt to the Company did they get in order to get replacements? Slick deal . . .

Tyrell bristles at that sharp question, but calms himself.

"If you must know the second series of servants we would sell wouldn’t NEED a six year lifespan to keep them in check," he explains slowly to me, as if I was a child. "Rachael so far has proven . . . VERY instructive. Very promising in that regards so I . . . had ordered that a new method that precluded that shortened lifespan be implemented with her . . . and another."

"Though why her I’m still asking myself," he mutters softly to himself, too low for human hearing (but not my hearing).

"And that is what’s so special about Phylicia?" I ask after a few beats, taking that aboard. "She bolts and you want to know just where the implants went wrong? She has no termination date, so won’t conveniently croak on you soon enough to avoid embarrassing the corporation?"

"In part. . . yes," Tyrell begins, suddenly looking uncomfortable. "But there is more to Phylicia than I’d authorized. The people in question who’d done it . . . turned up dead under strange circumstances so we need her to study and analyze. Something that we’d been trying for years to do, but never before managed . . . ."

He tells me and I must admit I’m . . . surprised.

"You’re telling me that she’s got psychic powers?" I asks softly, not sure if I’d heard right. "Like mind reading and telekinetics?!"

"Not right now . . . but possibly soon enough," he begins. "More like right now it’s not under conscious control. Right now, from what little notes we’d been able to decipher, she has a latent ability that . . . makes people want to help her. Not harm her."

Okaaay . . . . .

Meanwhile . . .

Zhora

What the hell’s wrong with me?

1. I mean I . . .I . . .

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