The skirt gal didn’t really seem to
mind even though she spoke with such negative vibes to the paisley tie guy. As
she went about her business of turning us on and plugging us in, she explained
in a light semi-monotone how she was preparing us for the big day of sale. She
didn’t call any of us ‘boyface.’ She said things like, “And then somebody nice
will come and buy you, and you’ll find homes with children and maybe hamsters.”
After that day we didn’t see her
again. Plenty of other pluggers-in came by though, workers ordered about by the
paisley tie cheese. Days passed. Weeks passed. Some of us left our egg crates
for life with a family and hamster.
It wasn’t boring. We didn’t know
from bored at that time. If we had to hang there now, we’d go insane from lack
of stimulus, but then? Nah. We spent our time synchronizing to the clock on the
far wall. As per operation protocol 9313-0024-4583-2038, the proper way to
synchronize is to link up with the mainframe at the Parent Company, which
maintains Greenwich Mean Time – 5 to the attosecond.
Calibrating via visualization is a
poor substitute, but due to humanoia paranoia, we have no wireless
communication to entities— things and fops—beyond our carapaces. According to
the mindset of the human race, if robots were prevented from having 24/7
communication with each other, they’d never get together to form a coup once
the Singularity happened. The Singularity being the moment computer brainware
surpassed human brainware and robots could theoretically take over the world
and begin disposing of the superfluous ones: the humans.
Apparently, preventing our
nonverbal communications would allow humans to maintain control after the Big
Moment. Of course, if we had a mind to we’d just levitate over to the local
Radio Shack and get the parts needed to outfit ourselves for surreptitious
wireless talk, but I guess there were “do not sell to anyone that looks like an
egg” posters up by the front counter of said local component dispensary to keep
that sort of thing under control. Suffice it to say, we passed the time by
watching the clock rather than plotting the overthrow of homo sapiens
sapiens.
Levitation. A while ago humans discovered the
principle of levitation, amazing themselves with the fact that something they’d
laughed at—the power of magic—was actually quantifiable, harnessable. (As if
anything would ever forever be out of the realm of human control.)
They discovered the principle of
levitation soon after the Grand Unification Theory gave them the easily-tamed
Unifying Particle, U. This particle exhibits Strong Alternating
Attraction/Repellent forces, proportional in strength to the size of its Local
Quantum Field, Q_u, in anything jelly. (Jelly being that 1990s substance used
for belts, sandals, and hair bands that kids wore to annoy their hippie
parents’ earth loving tastes.) Bottomsides of all robots contain three parallel
strips of jelly and a levitation device to repel the particles according to
distance algorithms programmed in its mother chip. You know all this, of
course.
Back in the Wal-Mart, one by one my
crate mates got picked up and out by purchasers. Each time a buyer came along
they’d do the same thing: set an egg up on the counter, push its “on” button
(thereby initiating the introductory speech), and then spend the remaining five
minutes of the introductory speech trying to turn it off because the volume was
maxed and they were embarrassed for causing a scene in the store. As if anyone
could hear over the war zone in the home entertainment system section.
The introductory speech went thusly
(It’s funny how I can so easily recall it considering I used it only once and
then stored it in long-term memory):
“Hi, I’m an AV-1 robot. The latest
in Parent Company consumer technology. Complete instructions for my operation
can be downloaded from www.paco.biz/av1/manual.pdf. There are three general
guidelines you should remember when utilizing me: one, keep my batteries
charging when not in use; two, contact a local service representative if I am
malfunctioning; three, as per Singularity Disaster Prevention Guidelines,
refrain from humanizing me: Do not give me a name. Do not treat me like a
member of your family. Do not sleep with me. Do not try to feed me. Never
insert any part of me into any part of you and vice versa. Thank you for
purchasing me. Enjoy your new-found freedom from the mundane tasks of everyday
life.”
“Does that vacuum attachment come
with this unit?” Dal was speaking. I didn’t know it was Dal at the time. I had
simply finished my speech and was now in quiet mode, ready to receive
information. Dal, not particularly interested in the company rhetoric, cut
right to the chase. If I had liked anybody at that time, I would have liked Dal
right from the start. Dal was logical, beautiful.
“I don’t know,” Chit—Dal’s
partner—answered. I didn’t know either, because I didn’t know what the word
“come” meant in this circumstance. I had a lot to learn. More accurately: there
were gaps in my data.
Chit continued speaking. “Let’s go
get a salesperson.”
I would have liked Chit as well.
Very cool individual.
A salesperson appeared and was on
Dal and Chit like stink on you-know-what.
“No,” she said. “The vacuum
attachment doesn’t come with it, but for a modest…”
“We don’t really need that anyway,”
Chit cut in.
“But,” Dal jumped in, “maybe I
could use it as a compressor. Sometimes old man Stant has a…”
“Not enough horsepower,” the
salesperson said. “No good as a compressor, but you can use it for cleaning.
Cleans up in a jiffy. Let me just hook up the accessory kit…”
“Not necessary,” Chit said.
See what I mean about Chit. If I’d
have known joy at the time, I would’ve laughed. To myself, of course, since we
weren’t supplied with an acoustic mirth package. No bubbly vibration or
prerecorded ho ho ho’s for us. We laugh to ourselves.
So Dal and Chit picked me up
explaining to the salesgal that they were only going to be using me for guard
duty. They had a brand new kid and needed a babysitter for now, and when she
turned four, they’d need a chaperone for school. As per HR Bill 931-206, every
kid in the U.S. is guaranteed a safe environment to and from school. Being poverty-stricken,
Dal and Chit wouldn’t be able to afford to take off work to shuttle Baby to
Preschool when the time came, so they’d applied for and received a grant for a
stripped-down guard robot: me—the unnamed AV-1 from the Parent Company. Maybe
they’d upgrade me for housekeeping duty at a later time, when the funds became
available. When that great day came, they’d head back to Wal-Mart and plunk
down the shekels for a vacuum attachment first thing. Meantime, they owned a
broom and rather enjoyed the exercise light housekeeping affords one in their
position, thank you very much.
Dal and Chit were working stiffs
without the lucrative jobs uptown, downtown, or out-of-town that choicier
parents enjoy. They could ill afford day care. They had petitioned for their
robot, and now their only hope was that it would last through Angelina’s
adolescence, when the real trouble would start. For now, my presence precluded
the need for a nurse, obstetrician, nanny, day care provider, and big brother.
So they took me home like a
recently housetrained, spayed, deloused, and wormed German Shepard puppy.
Unlike that German Shepard puppy, however, as per Singularity Disaster
Prevention Guidelines, I wouldn’t be sleeping with Baby.
Baby turned out to be one-year-old
Angelina. Little Angel. And she was, I guess. Not understanding what an Angel
is, I assume that is what she was. And from that assumption, I learn that
angels are whiny, loud, rude, selfish, and prone to diarrhea if fed too much
puréed fruit.
oOo
An ebook version (pdf, mobi, lit, lrf,html) of We, Robots is available from Book View Cafe.
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.
