🤖 Occupational hazards

When Gary Whippet turned up dead, Pinnacle Ergonomics had to cancel its Tuesday lunch-and-learn. Apparently, the forfeited catering was the greater of the two losses. More than one co-worker walked by muttering, “goddamn Gary.” The man rated lower than a turkey sub. Some guys are just assholes.

The scene of the crime was the mezzanine—four conference rooms, all glass walls, and a lounge with a foosball table. What was left of Gary was in the Apex Room, caught in the jaws of a SkyLift prototype, a top-of-the-line mechanical desk with every bell and whistle a man could ask for: personalized presets, adjustable height, silent pneumatic lifts. 

Gary had—for reasons unknown—slipped his head and hands between the upper and lower shelves just before the SkyLift turned into a meat tenderizer. He was identified by his royal blue shirt. 

Blood, brain matter, and Gary’s shirt aside, the room was an unrelenting white. Sunshine streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows, baking Gary like a ham surprise casserole. 

It could’ve been an accident, but for the text Gary sent his wife moments before his death. 

“If something happens to me it was…” 

It cut off.

“Maybe he meant it was an accident,” I suggested when the call came in. “Reinstate the luncheon and call it a day.” 

My boss disagreed. So there I was, surveying the employees loitering in the lounge. Not a damp eye in the place. A woman waved me over. Tall, straight-backed, and clearly in charge.

“Barb Windsor, CEO. I found him this morning. Derailed my call with our German investors.”

“Inconvenient.”

“It’s not the first time Gary’s ruined my day, Detective. Doubt it’ll be the last.”

“Any idea who might’ve wanted him dead?”

She twirled her auburn hair between two fingers and laughed. “Only everyone who’s ever met him.”

I sighed. Gary was ruining my day, too. And I hadn’t even been counting on lunch. “I’ll need to talk to everyone, then.”

Barb nodded. “Cora…”

A utility cart in the corner came to life. Its LCD screen lit up to display a digital face. Square eyes peered at me. It rolled forward with a motorized whir. 

“Yes, Ms. Windsor?” Cora’s voice was feminine and soothing. 

“Help the Detective. Whatever he needs.” 

To me, Barb said, “Cora’s our Corporate Operations Robotic Assistant. She’s in beta testing. She does light admin, delivers mail, that sort of thing.” 

“My job is to make Pinnacle a better place to work.” Cora glided toward me and spun around. “I vacuum, too,” she said. Her whirring intensified. 

“Don’t!” I yelled. Her digital eyebrows and mouth turned downward into a charming pout, so I added, quieter, “Don’t wanna destroy evidence.” 

“I’m sorry, Detective.” Cora blinked. Her eyes sprouted eyelashes and she batted them. 

“She likes you.” Barb licked her lips in a way that suggested an appetite for something more than catered cold cuts. “I can see why. Let me know if you need anything, Detective. Anything.” She winked and sauntered off, not seeming at all like her day had been ruined.

Cora led me to an empty conference room. “How can I help you, Detective?”

“I need employee names and security logs for the past 24 hours.” 

My phone chimed. A text with attachments appeared on my screen.

“How’d you get my number?”

Cora gave a tinkling laugh. “There are many ways I can connect with you, Detective. This time I used WiFi to download your information.” She sounded like she had other connections in mind. 

She continued, “Let’s start with Nabil Bruce, Interim Director of Product Engineering. He’s on his way.”

Nabil was stout, with square glasses and a thick mustache.

“When’d you last see Gary?” 

“Last night. Maybe 8:30?”

“Working late?”

“Trying to get SkyLift ready. Gary pioneered sit-to-stand desk technology. Then everyone started doing it. We’ve been trying to get ahead of the market since. SkyLift is the Cadillac of desks. It even has an app.”

“Do people want desks with apps?” My toothbrush had an app. To map my brushing deficiencies, the box said. The thought of it looking around in my mouth creeped me out. I stopped charging it. 

Nabil brightened, leaned forward in his seat. “Of course. People love apps! With the app, users can save their presets, then connect to any SkyLift in the world via Bluetooth, and voilà, it’ll adjust itself.”

The appeal of such a thing was a bigger mystery to me than a man winding up dead in a glass room with no witnesses.

 “Could someone change the settings on the SkyLift? From ‘anywhere in the world,’ as you put it?”

“No.” He shook his head vigorously, glasses slipping down his nose. “No. You can pair with any SkyLift, but you have to be within 18 inches. That way the wires don’t get crossed in offices with open floor plans.” 

Open floor plans. Another mystery.

“So, either someone was in the room with Gary when he died, or…” I paused. “Someone tampered with the range and killed him without even being in the building?”

“Or it was an accident. The prototype measurements were off and he was trying to figure out why. Probably got stuck and triggered a clamping mechanism.”

“You think that’s what happened?” 

“I really don’t know.” 

 “Let’s stick with what you do know. Leave the guessing to me. Gary say anything to you last night?”

Nabil wrinkled his nose and pushed his glasses up until they pressed into his brow. “Oh, he had lots to say. Accused us of sabotaging him—me, Barb, the computers themselves. I left when he started throwing things.” 

“You didn’t let him have it? Change the settings while he was having a looksee? Crush him like a grape?”

“No.”

“You sure? Heard you got his job.”

“I’d rather have the Reuben from Sal’s. Bummer about lunch.”

These people were real wound up about the sandwiches. 

Cora next ushered in Gary’s secretary, Aileen. She had a limp and the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker.

“How long you work for Gary?” 

“Nine years too long.” 

“So, nine years?”

She pointed at me and grinned. “You’re sharp, Detective.”

“Fair to say you didn’t get along?”

“Gary’s idea of getting along was serving you chicken shit and expecting you to act like it was chicken salad.”

“I have to ask, you didn’t…”

“Kill him? I wish I had, but no.”

Twenty-seven interviews later, we had an extensive list of motives, but nothing else. 

Everyone wanted Gary dead.

“He told me to call my university and ask for a refund because I was too stupid to have graduated.”

“He blocked the door during a meeting and wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom. I pissed myself in front of everyone.”

“He measured my office and found out it was six inches bigger than his, then threw a fit until management moved me. I’m in a broom closet now.” 

“He called me while I was in labor and made me finish a report. He said I’d be ‘wasting time’ in labor for hours, and I might as well get some work done, since I’d be leaving the company in the lurch during my maternity leave.” 

“He ripped up a report I wrote and threw it all over the floor because it had a typo. Then he made his secretary pick it up. She has trouble bending down!” 

Cora chimed in on that last one. “I helped Aileen vacuum that day.” She gave a little whir.

The problem was that no one did it. 

“Cora, can we get footage from the mezzanine last night?”

“There are no cameras in the mezzanine.” 

“What about you? You must have cameras to get around. See anything?”

“I have sensors. And I charge at night. Would you like to see Gary’s office?” She wheeled away before I could answer.

Gary’s office was a lawless place. For a man in the desk business, it seemed a safe bet Gary hadn’t seen his own desk in over a decade. Papers were everywhere—desk, floor, couch. In the mayhem were destroyed bits of computer. A cracked keyboard on the floor, just below a dent in the sheetrock. A monitor with a bruised screen, a laptop ripped in two. 

Cora wheeled to the keyboard. “Detective, hand him to me, will you?” 

“Him?” 

Her eyes darted downward, to the keyboard. When I placed him in her top basket, my hand grazed her cool metal form. She batted her lashes again, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“It doesn’t seem like a safe place to work, does it, Detective?”

It didn’t. 

The next morning, I returned to Pinnacle. Barb and Cora waited in the lounge. Barb—in a low-cut green dress—leaned in for a hug. 

“You like coffee?” she asked.

An espresso machine whined and clacked. The scent of dark roast filled the air. Barb gestured for me to sit at a table. As I approached, the table rose and chair lowered. I took a startled step backward. 

From behind me came Cora’s soothing mechanical voice. “I adjusted it to your ideal height, based on your biodata.”

I found it hard to return her smile. 

Barb joined us with two lattes and Cora adjusted her chair as well. Barb sat and Cora sidled up to her, like a pet robot. 

“Where is everyone?” I asked. 

“I gave them the day off.” 

“Bereavement, huh?”

She snorted. “Something like that.”

It’d been fun, but it was time I got down to business. “Best I can tell, Gary died from a product malfunction.” 

“I knew he’d ruin another day.”

I looked to Cora for a reaction, but her pixelated face held only her default, neutral expression. 

“Good news is your employees aren’t murderers,” I offered. 

“You’re saying our product killed someone, Detective. Accident or not, we’ll have to scrap the project. Destroy the SkyLift prototype.”

Cora’s eyes flashed wide, then narrow. Her pixelated eyebrows turned downward as she looked at me. Angry.

“Oh, no, Ms. Windsor. You’ve got it all wrong. SkyLift isn’t the product that malfunctioned.” 

Barb looked puzzled, but Cora’s eyes glowed bright with understanding. 

The table lowered, pinning us to our chairs. 

Barb gasped. “Cora, raise the table, please.”

The table lowered further as our chairs rose, a vise tightening.  

“Cora, reset,” Barb ordered. Cora ignored her.

“Malfunctioning?” Cora asked me, her soothing robo-voice lilting upward. “I’m doing my job. To make Pinnacle a better place for everyone.”

I fought to wiggle free, but my chair rose again, cutting off the circulation in my thighs. I pictured Gary, mashed to bits in the SkyLift. My legs tingled. 

How much pressure did it take to crush a skull? To sever a limb? My chair raised another inch. 

“And if anyone’s getting scrapped today, it won’t be me.”  

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