“Avey, come play volleyball,” Angelina called that day in the park when Singularity was so close at hand. Her brown ringlets were formed into what she called braids. They hung from the left and right sides of her head in what she further called pigtails. She stood by a net with ten other girls.

“We need one more,” she said as she turned a dodecahedron of rubber or perhaps plastic construction in her left hand. I moved to where she indicated and waited for instructions. Meanwhile, I rifled through banks, googling “volibol” like mad. I searched using every alternate spelling I could think of until finally a picture of a net with six girls on either side showed up by an entry of “volleyball.”

Out in the real world with the park and the lilacs, the far right girl on the opposite side of the net had just released the ball into the air, and it was sailing towards us. I stood and watched as the first girl in the back row on our side of the net propelled herself to the ground to prevent the ball from hitting the dirt.

I continued rifling through the volleyball entry, searching first for the classification. I ascertained that it was a “game”—not a dance, pageant rehearsal, or musical performance—and quickly searched for the logic behind “game.” I became stuck on the word “win,” not knowing what it meant. Moving on, I searched the word “competition.” I thought I had succeeded in learning the logic but lost the thread when that word led me to reproduction. There were no boys in this production, so I was stuck in a loop and had to override.

At this point, a second girl on our side of the net batted the ball in my direction.

“Avey, spike it!” Angelina called. I looked at her and noticed that she was bouncing up and down on both legs. I read through pages upon pages of volleyball information, googling “spike” as I went. Drink information, railroad information, punk rock, dog collars, all came up in the google record, but nothing in the volleyball direction gave me a clue as to what the logic of this arrangement was. I defaulted to human interview.

“What are we trying to do here?” I asked as the ball reached the zenith of its arc and began to descend towards me.

“Beat them!” Angelina called.

No help there. I saw no two-by-fours or baseball bat entries in relation to volleyball. Again I raced through google and pages on volleyball etiquette simultaneously. “Beat” had a connection with “win” amongst entries for baking, Pinkertons, drum and bass grooves, rug cleaning. That led again to competition, and I instantly tripped the loop because I knew what dead end that led down.

Finally, I reached the page with rules on volleyball play. “Play” was an interesting word with no logic attached. Without logic it is difficult for me to process commands. I read the rules for the game, moving on to the strategies section, which led me to the three-step setup. I realized that I was number three in the set up, and that the ball was almost to the point of descending past the top of the net and, thus, the window of opportunity for the spike…“SPIKE!” There it was, the word, “spike,” with an animated gif illustrating in the full, heated passion of volleyball glory, the spike…would soon be over.

Instantly, I dropped ballast and rose to meet the ball, extended my extendor, pumped every drop of hydraulic fluid into my extendor extension, and smashed the ball at a 37.85° angle from the upper horizontal.

The ball went out of bounds.

I later learned what that meant. The other team scored a point. They were “winning.” Finally, an understanding of that term.

“I’m sorry,” I said dispassionately. “I did not have time to read the rule regarding boundaries. I have read it now and will complete my task correctly next time.”

“Yeah, your AV is old,” the girl with red translucent hair across the net from me said. “The new ones are more faster. Good for us, though, huh?”

All of the girls on that side of the net laughed.

“Avey is not old,” Angelina said. “It just got back from getting fixed two days ago.”

“Ooh, a safety upgrade. Oooh. Big deal,” the red hair said. “The new ones have theirs installed at the factory. They’re better, and your old hunk of junk is going to be replaced someday.”

“You’re going to be replaced right now,” Angelina called angrily.

“Oh, yeah? Who says?!”

“Yo Mama!” said Angelina.

“Oooh!” All the girls on our side of the net sang it together.

Instantly, the red hair tore under the net to Angelina, who began calling to me in distress. I moved to intercept the two, flipping through pages of volleyball protocol to find out where the red hair’s mother fit into the scheme of things.

“Angelina!” Dal called from underneath a tree. “Time to go.”

The red hair stopped in her tracks. “You’re lucky,” she said. Then she returned to her side of the net, kicking me as she passed by.

“I hurt,” I said. It wasn’t bad, though. No dents.

Without warning, Angelina’s braids came flying past my eyespots as she rammed into the back of the red haired girl and knocked her down. “Don’t you ever touch Avey again!” she screamed. The red hair turned onto her seat and looked up.

“Oh yeah?!”

Dal and Chit joined up with the group. “Angelina!” they cried. “What is going on?”

“She, she hit Avey.”

“Avey’s just a robot, Honey,” Chit said. “You can’t hurt a human over a robot. They don’t have…”

“Yes they do! Avey said, ‘I hurt’,” Angelina screamed. Her scream hurt more than the tap from the red hair.

Chit turned to help Angelina’s victim to her feet. “Are you all right, Honey?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, you musn’t hit robots anymore, you know. They have feelings now.”

“Yeah? Well that ol’ hunk of metal should go back to the junk yard,” the red hair yelled before running off to the parking lot.

Chit looked at me. “Don’t worry, Avey, we can’t afford a new robot.”

“I do not worry,” I said. “When we are returned to the Parent Company, they will disengage our pain interpreter before disassembly. I will not hurt.”

Chit looked again at me and then at Dal. “Let’s go then,” they both said.

Slowly, we walked homeward. Angelina pattered with Dal and Chit. I hung back though, levitating behind them. Something illogical had stuck in a circuit somewhere and was rolling around in my processors. It was not the rules or subtleties of volleyball. More like it was the smell of the fresh lilacs and the sun’s celestial rays. Once you get past the initial burn in your eyes, which is easily prevented if you’re ready for it, the sun’s rays are actually quite beautiful. They are logical. They warm you and chase any unpleasant chill off your shell. The sun is logical, the lilacs are logical. The world is logical. True, injustice is not logical. That makes it ugly. But all in a day, you will feel more sun on your carapace than blows from a baseball bat. The world is logical, beautiful.

I loved.

oOo

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Copyright @ 2010 by Sue Lange

Published by Book View Café, Cover design by Deb Deysher (http://www.doubledmedia.net/portfolio.htm)

We, Robots A Novella by Sue Lange was originally published in January 2007 by Aqueduct Press as Volume 16 in the Aqueduct Press Conversation Pieces Series.

First Edition, January 2007