Dal, Chit, and Angelina lived in a
two-room apartment on the bad side of JerseyTown. I didn’t know it was bad of
course. I only learned about “bad” years later. At that time I simply noted
that the apartment was a two-room corner of a brownstone with neighbors that
rose in the middle of the day and then bickered until evening before going out
for a short while and returning later with greasy food. I knew it was greasy
for two reasons: a high percentage of lipo-aerosols clung to the air whenever
they returned, and their trash bags contained much Styrofoam and golden arch
material.
And how do I know that? During the
time before the onset of preschool for Angelina, Dal and Chit hired me out for
a little pin money. Most of the neighbors were happy to have me take out their
trash. For about a year, I picked up the leavings of the daily lives of
everyone who lived on the floor. Most people didn’t even bother bagging once I
started showing up. I carried my own bag supply, rummaged in the neighbors’
dust bins and corner trash piles, and loaded up the downstairs dumpsters.
“That thing’ll pay for a year’s
worth of baby food,” Dal said gleefully to Chit.
It worked for a while, until the
day they had to pull me off trash duty because I accidentally picked up a
shoebox of Cannabis sativa with the
Canfields’ trash. The shoebox had been stored next to a pile of used Pampers in
the middle of the bedroom. I had no idea humans were partial to dried plants,
and the Canfields didn’t appear very Wiccan to me. If I’d seen some candles and
pentagrams, maybe I would’ve been more careful, checked into it. I am
intelligent after all; I have the latest in AI technology. But we were rather
poorly taught and programmed when it came to illegals. I didn’t know much about
slave trading, wiretapping, or homemade bombs either. All useful information
you’ll agree, but damn poor data (DPD) was all I had to work with at that time.
So I got fired, and Dal and Chit
had to pony up for Angelina’s animal crackers from their own shallow pockets.
That was just a side thing anyway, an icing-type deal for Dal and Chit—the
parent company of Angelina. My real gig was keeping an eyepatch on the little
one. The Angel.
Her first birthday coincided with
the eve of my arrival, which made me a birthday present. The first time I met
her she was in diapers, having tantrums, and burping up lunch. In the ensuing
days, weeks, and months, I ever-hovered over the crib during naptime, keeping
track of vitals and sighs. During the day, I was the babysitter, allowing Dal
and Chit to return to fulltime work. AV-1s are certified baby watchers. We have
extensive medical data in our memory—entire copies of the latest PDR, Gray’s
Infant Anatomy, and Dr. Spock, of course. We can monitor all corporeal
functions and teach the ABC’s at the same time. We schedule ourselves for
Baby’s doctor’s visits and feeding times. Exercise can be provided to the child
(or therapy, if the need arises). And communication links with parents can be
set up if anything is over our heads. But what would be?
At eighteen months, the little
nipper was up and around, knocking over the plastic greenery Dal and Chit used
to dress up the place. Angelina graduated from sticking every plastic toy on
the floor into her mouth to sticking everything that had heretofore been out of
her reach into her mouth: tableware, soap and dispenser, bills, Bics (pens and
lighters), toilet paper. It was a busy time. The government’s provision
allowing Dal and Chit to afford procreation was justified at this time.
By the time Angelina was four and
ready for school, I was a fixture in the household. I had my daily chores:
cleaning up, thawing dinner, preparing Angelina for meals, naps, and nighttime,
and then preparing the house for Dal and Chit’s return from their employment as
domestics. They had positions doing the same things I did, but for the wealthy
who could afford humans capable of handling a phone call that needed to be
answered with a lie. Something robots have never quite gotten the hang of:
lying.
Wealthy people learned early on
(like back in Old Testament times) that it’s always better to own a human being
than to own an object purported to be a time or labor saver. Humans have
feelings; they understand nuance. The human can protect the owner so much
better than a non-judgmental screening device can. A human can fake stupidity,
ignorance, or surprise. They can emote tragedy or sympathy. They can manipulate
other humans with these tricky skills. The wealthy always have organic servants
to serve not so much as laundresses, cleaning ladies, or gardeners (which of
course they do as well), but as screeners. The human servants deflect calls and
visits from unwanted friends or salesmen with a “Misses is not feeling well
today,” or “Master is out on the course. Perhaps you’d care to join him; he’s
riding the bull today.” Or even, “Why Master! How could you say such a thing?
Madame weeps every morning when you go to the club. She is absolutely devoted
to you. She’d never think of doing such a thing with such a person.”
Yes, Dal and Chit were domestics to
the rich, and they got me, the poor man’s domestic, costing about as much as a
plasma TV. Very affordable.
My big gig, the reason they’d
petitioned for me at all, was to protect little Angelina when she made the big
change. The going off to school. I wasn’t actually going to stay with her all
day. My job was to protect her on the way to and from. I’d be levitating up to
the roof to wait during my off hours when she and the other little squirts were
inside getting their dose of kindergarten.
I wasn’t needed inside the school
building because the police monitors, bomb sniffers, guard dogs, and classroom
chaperones would take over from the front door.
Once a week, Angelina would be
spending an hour with a therapist who would monitor her mental health and tip
off the authorities if she’d experienced any foul play during school hours. The
therapist was a relatively new expense to the local taxpayers, installed as per
the Fontaine Act of 2035. The Fontaines sued NYPS 32 because little Johnny
Fontaine had sustained sexual abuse at the hands of the Big Kids (3rd graders)
back in ’34. Ever since then all schools had installed mental health workers to
detect any psychological damage sustained by any kid anywhere at anytime. It
acted as a deterrent, making sure no harm befell anybody. At least not on
school property. What happened outside of that was my responsibility because
anything that ever happened anywhere, anytime to little Angelina outside of
school would have landed Dal and Chit in a place no parent wants to go: child
protection court. Takes a brave soul to have a kid nowadays.
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.
