Robot Depot

by Russell F. Moran

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  As if I didn’t have enough to worry about, this afternoon is the Beekman deposition at the office of his attorney, Wally Yaeger.

  Jenny, Bob Gentile, Blanche, Bennie Weinberg, and I gathered in my office to prepare for the deposition. I wanted Bennie to assess the truthfulness of John Beekman, the robot lover.

  “Bennie, please pass me the water pitcher,” Bob Gentile said. “Thank you. You are now my assistant in case anybody asks. Yaeger may object to your presence at the deposition.”

  “You lawyers really are full of shit,” Bennie said, laughing.

  “Only when necessary, Ben.”

  We went over the evidence, although I thought the exercise was absurd. Yes, the lady robot came from us, and yes, it had a battery-charging problem. But what made me crazy was that we were involved in a lawsuit with a guy who was angry with us for screwing up his romance with a robot.

  “I’ve been making inquiries and doing some research as Bob requested,” Blanche said. “This guy Beekman is a three dollar bill. He’s been married four times, not counting his current wedded state to a machine. He was arrested once for masturbating in front of a doll store. You can’t make this shit up. When our people examined the robot, which he brought in for repairs, they found these pink panties on the bot. Maybe Bob wants to return them to Mr. Beekman at the deposition.”

  Laughing, Bob took the panties and put them in his briefcase.

  “I just may do that, Blanche.”

  “Our only legal obligation is to repair his robot wife, or replace it if the repairs don’t work,” Gentile said. “I understand that we’ve fixed the robot’s battery compartment, so in the interest of getting rid of this case, I’m going to offer him the fixed-up bot in exchange for a release.”

  “What’s the demand?” Jenny asked.

  “Ten million. If Yaeger pushes the issue I think we should offer him a brand new android to replace his ‘wife.’ He’s been married enough times that I don’t think he’ll have a hard time adjusting to yet another spouse.”

  Beekman and his attorney, Wally Yaeger, were waiting for us when we entered the conference room where the deposition would be held. The room, about 40 by 50 feet, was stark modern, and obviously decorated without the aid of an interior designer. The furniture was cheap shit, the kind that you find in a lousy diner. It was garish green, threadbare in spots, and the walls looked as if they hadn’t been painted in years. I guessed he wanted a ‘man of the people’ décor. I sat down next to Jenny on a chair equipped with a big rip on the seat. As Bob Gentile predicted, Yaeger objected to the presence of everyone except me and Bob. As we planned, we would settle for just Bennie and Jen to be there. Blanche would have to go. I felt bad for her because I could tell that she looked forward to a fun deposition.

  After the legal preliminaries, including oath taking and signing documents, the deposition began, with Bob Gentile questioning Mr. Beekman.

  “Mr. Beekman, did there come a time when you came into possession of a robot that you believe was manufactured and sold by my client Robot Depot?”

  “I never knew she was a robot.” Beekman said.

  “What is her name?”

  “Gloria.”

  “Did you give her that name or did she tell you?”

  “She told me her name was Gloria.”

  Shit, I wished Blanche could be here to see this.

  “Did you have intimate sexual contact with Gloria?”

  Objection,” Yaeger shouted. “Irrelevant and immaterial.”

  “Counselor,” said Bob, trying to suppress a laugh, “I’m trying to establish the time when your client came to the belief that Gloria was a human being.”

  “Yes, I had sex with Gloria,” said Beekman without waiting for his attorney to respond to Bob. He seemed to want to tell us about it.

  “When you said that you had sex, sir, did that include full sexual intercourse including penetration?” Bob Gentile asked, trying desperately not to laugh.

  “Of course. It was a wonderful experience.”

  Bob reached into his briefcase and withdrew the pink panties.

  “This garment belongs to your client. We found these panties on the robot known as Gloria.”

  “Objection,” shouted Yaeger. “The defense has shown no chain of custody for this garment.”

  “I’ll be happy to provide you with written statements or a live deposition of the Robot Depot employees who found the panties on Gloria,” Gentile said. “I have no further questions.”

  Bob Gentile got the only testimony that he really wanted, a statement about the impossible. There’s simply no place to insert anything into the robot. Bob considered the case closed at this point, he would later tell me. Yaeger looked like he’d been hit by a truck. Now it was his turn to depose me. Yaeger focused his eyes on mine with a piss load of theatricality.

  “Mr. Bateman, are you the CEO of Robot Depot?”

  As coached by Bob, I answered without any emotion, even though I wanted to punch this asshole. So I answered, “yes.”

  “Do you care at all about the quality of the robots that you sell to the public?”

  “Objection,” Bob Gentile said, “you’re asking the witness for an opinion.”

  “Counselor, are you suggesting that Mr. Bateman doesn’t care about the products he sells?”

  This guy Yaeger really is a dick, as Bob had warned me.

  “I’m not suggesting anything, Mr. Yaeger, all I’m asking is that you conform your questions to the law.”

  “To the best of your knowledge, did there come a time when your company, Robot Depot, released into the stream of commerce a female-appearing android bearing the model number B3205?”

  “If by ‘stream of commerce,’ you’re asking me if we sold that robot, the answer is yes, but we did not sell it directly to your client.”

  “How many of these sexually attractive androids do you sell in a given year?”

  “Objection,” Gentile shouted. “If you find these machines sexually attractive, that’s your business. Please do not pose such a ridiculous question to Mr. Bateman.”

  “Okay, without expressing any opinion of the robots, how many did you sell last year?”

  “The answer is one—one female android,” I said.

  The deposition became as crazy as I expected. Unless Yaeger was able to come up with something surprising, I saw this case as over.

  “What is the purpose of this android, Mr. Bateman? Is it not as a sex partner?”

  Bob was about to object, but he just laughed and said to me, “Go ahead and answer.”

  “No, Mr. Yaeger, the purpose of the android is not to serve as a sex partner, but for use as a receptionist or greeter at a business. If you physically examine the robot you will see that your question doesn’t make sense. You can no sooner have sex with a park bench than you can with the android.” I violated Bob’s warning against giving more of an answer than what was asked, but I couldn’t resist.

  “I have no further questions,” Yaeger said.

  As we were walking out of the room, Yaeger called Bob Gentile over to the side.

  “My final demand is $1 million, but that’s only if we can settle it today.”

  “And here’s my offer,” Bob Said. “We’ll replace the android, but after we subtract for the cost of repairs that we already performed. If you don’t accept my offer, I’ll put the case on the trial calendar and we’ll see what a jury thinks of your client’s broken marriage to a robot. But before we even get that far I’m going to make a Motion for Summary Judgment based on the testimony we heard today. I’m going to ask the court to throw this case out.”

  “Good day, sir,” Yaeger said.

  “Well, Bennie,” Bob Gentile said. “Were these two telling the truth?”

  “Yaeger was lying through his teeth, but you expected that. For him the truth is how much money he can extract from a defendant. Beekman, on the other hand, is an interesting case. He’s a garden
variety psychopath. He actually believes that Robot Depot did him wrong with a faulty robot. He even believes he had sex with the damn thing. I loved Mike’s comment about having sex with a park bench. Beekman wasn’t lying in a way that could be seen as perjury. The nut really believes this shit.”

  ***

  “Mike, it’s Bob Gentile for you on line three,” said Dianne the next morning. “He sounds extremely happy about something.”

  “I just got off the phone with Yaeger,” Bob said. “After he and his client got the shit kicked out of them yesterday, he decided to accept reality. He’s dismissing the case on his own motion in exchange for the fixed-up robot. You now have one less thing to worry about, Mike.”

  One less thing, according to Bob Gentile, I thought. One less thing.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Jen, wake up,” I shouted. She didn’t awaken so I shook her. When she opened her eyes, I didn’t have to tell her what was wrong. Our house was on fire. I don’t remember where, but I recalled seeing a video warning you to keep your bedroom door closed at night. After we watched that video, keeping the bedroom door closed became a habit with us. We could see the orange glow at the base of the door and could actually hear the flames roaring on the other side.

  Our bedroom overlooked a sloping roof.

  “That window,” I yelled. I knew enough about fires to realize that when I opened the window, whatever flames were in the hallway would come at us from under the door like a blast furnace. We had to move fast. I grabbed my cellphone off the table next to the bed. Then I opened the window and helped Jen onto the roof. I followed her onto the roof and quickly closed the window behind me. The roof we stood on was one story high, with evergreen trees just below the roofline.

  “Let’s do it,” I said. “Aim for the middle of that tree.” We both jumped and neither of us was injured except for scrapes. I looked up and saw that the entire house was becoming engulfed in flames. We ran about a hundred feet into the yard and I called 911 on my cell phone. As I was pressing the buttons we could hear the sound of fire engines pulling up the block. Apparently an alert neighbor had already spotted the fire.

  A fireman ran up to us with a couple of blankets, which we hardly needed on the warm July night. We knew the guy, a neighbor and member of the volunteer fire department.

  “Are you guys okay?” he asked. “Any pain in your chests? Scratchy throat?”

  I told him we had our bedroom door closed, so we didn’t inhale any smoke.

  “That’s why you’re alive,” the fireman said. “I’ve seen enough dead bodies in rooms with the door left open.”

  Sam and Laura Braun, our next-door neighbors, invited us into their house. They loaned us some clothes to replace our fire department blankets. As we sipped coffee in their kitchen we heard a loud crashing sound. When we looked out the window we could see that our house was now a pile of flaming rubble, the roof having collapsed.

  The four of us walked to the main pumper truck, where the fire chief stood, shouting orders.We knew him well from the neighborhood.

  “Hi Mike, Hi Jenny,” he said. “The police are sending their arson squad. Even though the fire isn’t completely doused, it looks suspicious. It looks like accelerants were used in four areas of the first floor. In each of those areas are remnants of machines of some sort that look like floor cleaning robots. From the way I see it, I’m betting that the fire started in those four locations. I don’t want to be dramatic with you folks, but it looks to me like somebody wanted you both dead.”

  Chapter Thirty One

  Our house burned down two days ago as a result of arson, not an accident. The arson squad confirmed the fire chief’s suspicion that four areas were set up with accelerants, and in each area they found the charred remains of a floor cleaning robot, one of whom was “Dusty,” a bot we thought of as an old friend.

  Jen and I moved into the guest cottage on our property. Fortunately the flames didn’t reach the cottage. We did some quick shopping to replace all of our clothes that went up in flames. For the first time in our lives, we’ve been tailed by bodyguards.

  “Rick Bellamy, that FBI guy, is here to see you, Mike,” Dianne said.

  It was 10 a.m. and Jen and I were sitting in my office with Blanche, Bennie Weinberg, and Phil Townsend. It was more like a war council than a meeting. Because of the exploding robot incidents of the past few weeks, I had ordered increased security for our headquarters, our manufacturing plant, and all of our stores. One of our board members made a motion during an Internet meeting that the company pay for private security guards for Jen and me. The motion carried unanimously.

  “Good morning, everybody,” Bellamy said. “Robot Depot, you may be pleased to know, is now the most critical file in our office. Mike, when these incidents first started, I ventured the opinion that somebody is out to fuck you. That’s no longer speculation, but the truth, the obvious truth. Now, the only question is exactly who.”

  “Rick, after our house burned to the ground I no longer doubt that somebody is looking to shut us down, and I don’t just mean just the company, but Jenny and me. I still don’t have a clue as to who would do this.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. It’s now officially an FBI matter, and that wasn’t just my idea. The White House wants to know what the hell is going on. President Trump is quite fond of you, Mike. Apparently you got to know each other before he was elected. He sees Robot Depot as one of America’s great companies, and I can’t say I blame him. I’m sure he’s going to Tweet about his feelings. You’re on the cutting edge of the new economy. So today we’re going to focus on possible suspects. I made up a list of ideas that I want to share with you people. Mike, please tell us what you think are the main areas of suspicion.”

  “Competitors,” I said. “I know that we’re brainstorming, but I think that’s a long shot. We have about three serious competitors, and I’ve shared that info with you guys at the FBI. But we’re really friendly with the competition. Yeah, we’re giants compared to them, but they provide us with additional retail outlets, and they help spread the word that robots are good and useful things. I think they all expect a phone call with an offer to buy them out some day, and that may just happen. I already opened the subject with our anti-trust lawyers.

  “A jilted lover, is suspect number two. Jenny’s my only lover, and I’d rather blow myself up than sneak around. What about a jilted lover of a key employee? I simply cannot believe that somebody would cause such death and destruction just because a former boy or girlfriend works for us. It doesn’t make sense.

  “The next area of suspicion is a disgruntled employee. Again, I try to look at the logic. I’m sure that over the years somebody has parted company from us not under the best of terms. I’ve also shared those names with the FBI, and they haven’t found anything. I’m going to let Rick Bellamy talk about our fourth area of suspicion. Rick?”

  “I almost hate to say this because it sounds too big to fight,” said Bellamy, “but it’s where we’re dragged by the facts and logic. The prime suspect is terrorism, specifically the Islamic State or ISIS. The depravity of the attack on Yankee Stadium leads us to that hypothesis.”

  “Why the hell would a terrorist group want to focus on a specific company?” Phil Townsend asked said.

  “Bennie, I think you’re the best one to answer Phil’s question,” Bellamy said.

  “I have worked on enough cases involving ISIS or al Qaeda to know that we can’t figure out the why until we’ve discovered the what,” Bennie said. “In other words, what are they looking to accomplish? Then we’ll figure out why, if that’s important. From my study of Islamist extremism, and I’ve studied it a lot, I think that the jihadis see robots as somehow anti-religious, mimickers of God so to speak. They see it as another case of infidels indulging in idolatry. So what better way to avenge the idolatry than to make the robots destroy their creators.”

  “Jenny and I realized something,” I said, “something pretty scary. The a
rson squad determined that four fires started downstairs in our house, and each of the four areas was occupied by a burnt-out robot. It’s the same set of facts as in those five houses that burned down a few weeks ago. Here’s the scary part. We brought all four of those bots into our house three years ago—three years ago. All of a sudden, a few days ago, the bots erupted into flames, a week after those other house fires. Anybody want to venture a guess as to how many of those kind of bots we’ve sold in the past three years? The answer is that we’ve sold 450,000 robotic floor cleaners all over the world. Remember that movie, The War of the Worlds? In that flick, gigantic machines that were buried for thousands of years are awakened by lightning bolts to reap destruction. Well, just working off the facts about our house, the time span isn’t thousands of years, but at least three— At least. It could be longer. So what I’m telling you folks is that there could be a gigantic number of our bots waiting for a signal to blow up. We don’t know how the explosions were triggered, but at least we have something to focus on. It makes me sick to say this, but based on what we know, there are thousands of ticking time bombs out there. We did some quick calculations, and found out that since the explosions in the five houses two weeks ago, followed up by the Jameston Building in Chicago, followed by the sabotaged cruise ship, followed by the drone attack at the Yankee Stadium, followed by our house burning down five days ago, and all of a sudden I think we have a national emergency. I agree with Rick Bellamy that it looks like terrorism. What the hell else could it be? The operation, so far, covers a wide territory and it was executed with a high level of sophistication. Need I mention the thousands of deaths and injuries, and billions of dollars in property damage? I think we know what we have to do. We need to launch the biggest product recall in the history of business. Rick, your thoughts?”