"Who are you?" Fixer said.
"Someone unofficial," Creek said. "Someone not looking to get you in trouble, or to make trouble or who cares about your extracurricular hobbies. But someone who needs some answers, one way or another."
Fixer chewed on this for a minute. The Akita was now fixed on Creek and ready to take a good chunk out of him.
"No trouble," Fixer said.
"No trouble," Creek said. "Just information."
Fixer chewed on this for another minute.
"If you could answer before your dog rips out my throat, I'd really appreciate it," Creek said.
Fixer glanced over to the Akita. "Down, Chuckie," he said, and the dog immediately sat but kept an eye on Creek. Fixer grabbed the music player on the counter. "Give me a minute to put this into the system and put up the 'out to lunch sign," he said. "Then you and I can go down to my workshop."
"Great," Creek said. Fixer pulled up his keyboard and typed in the information for his work order. Creek stood back from the counter and looked over at the Akita, who was still staring at him intently.
"Nice doggie," Creek said.
"There's been a 'Fixer' in this neighborhood since before it was Dogstown," Fixer said to Creek, as he handed him a beer from his workshop refrigerator. "I was supposed to be the one who finally left the shop behind—I went to Howard and got an engineering degree—but right after I graduated, Dad had a stroke and I tended the store for him until he died. After that, I kept on. As long as you don't mind living with aliens, it's a great neighborhood. The Paqil are good people and they've been good to my family; they're incredibly loyal to the shop. The family stayed here when most humans moved out all those years ago. So they keep bringing their stuff in to be repaired, even when it's cheaper just to buy something new. I make a good living."
"Augmented by your side business," Creek said, motioning at the workshop. The fabricator was in a corner, hidden by a tarp.
Fixer grinned ruefully. "Which has also been a family tradition,'' he said. "One of the nice things about Dogstown is that it has almost no crime and almost no human police presence. That makes this shop a very useful place to run a side business out of."
"Like making this," Creek said, holding up the apparatus.
"Like making that," Fixer agreed. "Or any other number of activities that need to get done without much attention. The 'fixer" part of the name has more than one meaning."
"Nothing bloody, I hope," Creek said.
"God, no," Fixer said. "Even a nice quiet address in Dogstown wouldn't help with that. No. I make things. I also arrange things. Occasionally I find things. Victimless crimes. Well, mostly," Fixer said, nodding in the direction of the apparatus. "From what you tell me, that one wasn't so victimless."
"How does one get into your side business?" Creek asked.
"In my case, one inherits it," Fixer said. "After my father had his stroke, I got paid a visit by some nice men in the employ of the Malloy family, who detailed my father's relationship with them to me, down to the loan my dad took out to pay for my college education. I fell into the job the same way I fell into running the shop."
"And you don't mind working the shady side of the street," Creek said.
Fixer shrugged. "The Malloys have people like me all over," he said. "I do a few things for them a year, but never enough to pop on the radar. And even if I did, the Malloys pay the right people to make sure that I pop right back off the radar. I'm still trying to figure out how you found me."
"I use nontraditional means," Creek said, and held up the apparatus again. "Now," he said. "Tell me about this baby. Is this something you did for the Malloys?"
"If it was, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation," Fixer said. "This was a true extracurricular. I was approached for this one by a man named Jean Schroeder."
"How did he know about your side business?" Creek asked.
"I'd arranged some travel documents for him once at the request of the Malloys," Fixer said. "Schroeder went to college with Danny Malloy. Anyway, a few weeks ago Schroeder called me for a repair job on his home network and then sounded me out about the job while I was there. I typically don't do extra work. The Malloys don't like it But I've worked with this guy before and I had more on him than he had on me. And I decided I could use the money. So I charged him an outrageous rate for the work on his network, and two weeks later, this was ready to go. I helped install it—and unpleasant experience, I assure you—just a few days ago."
"You're not worried about telling me about his now?" Creek said. "Being that Schroeder is a friend of the Malloys."
"I never said they were friends," Fixer said. "Schroeder just went to college with one of them, so he knew they could be useful. And in that one particular case, their interests coincided. This doesn't have anything to do with that so far as I know. I'm sure Schroeder was planning on using my relationship with the Malloys as a guarantee I wouldn't talk, since if I ever talk officially, some of the Malloy boys are going to pay me a visit, and not a friendly one this time. But since you're threatening to expose me if I don't talk, he loses. Very sneaky of you."
"I do my best," Creek said. "You seem to be handling this well."
"Do I?" Fixer said, and laughed. "Yes. Well. Don't be fooled by this calm exterior. Inside I'm shitting my pants. If you can find me, so can someone who isn't just looking for information. It's sloppy shit like this that gets people like me killed. I'm telling you all this because short of killing you, I don't see another way out. You've just made me very, very nervous, Mr. Creek. And between you and me I don't think I'm out of it. The minute you leave this shop is the minute I start waiting for the other shoe to drop."
"Any messages?" Creek asked his agent when he returned home.
"Three," the agent said, a disembodied voice because Creek had not put on his monitor glasses. "The first is from your mother, who is wondering whether you're planning to come visit her next month like you said you were going to. She's worried about your father's health and she also has a nice young lady she'd like you to meet, who is a doctor of some sort or another. Those are her words."
"My mother was aware that she was speaking to an agent and not me, right?" Creek asked.
"It's difficult to say," the agent said. "She didn't stop talking until she hung up. I was unable to tell her I wasn't you."
Creek grinned. That sounded like Mom. "Second message, please," he said.
"From Ben Javna. He is interested in the state of your investigation.''
"Send him a message that I have news for him and I will call him later this evening or tomorrow. Third message, please."
"You have a message from an IBM server at NOAA. Your software is unpacked, modeled, and integrated. It is awaiting further instructions."
Creek sat down at his keyboard and put on his monitor glasses; the form of his agent was now projected into the middle of his living room. "Give me a window at the IBM, please," he told his agent. The agent opened up the window, which consisted of a shell prompt. Creek typed "diagnostic" and waited while the software checked itself for errors.
"Intelligent agent" is a misnomer. The "intelligence" in question is predicated on the agent's ability to understand what its user wants from it, based on what and how that user speaks or types or gestures. It must be intelligent enough to parse out "urns" and "uhs" and the strange elliptic deviations and tangents that pepper everyday human communication—to understand that humans mangle subject-verb agreement, mispronounce the simplest words, and expect other people to have near-telepathic abilities to know what "You know, that guy that was in that movie where that thing happened and stuff" means.