Robot Wrecker

by Paul Tomlinson

  I was five when the city celebrated its centenary. There had been various events designed to boost morale and make the people forget about the second dark age which, they said, was now over. I don't remember much about it, but – like all the kids – I'd found it hilarious that the founder of our glorious city had been a man called Snot, the leader of a grungy bunch of Anglo-Saxons who decided to make their home here. My home town was really Snotingehame, home of Snot. I guess his little band had felt safe up on the red cliffs.

  Snot's people dug a twenty-foot wide ditch around their settlement, piling the earth on the inside to form an embankment. At the top of the embankment they built a wooden wall, which enclosed an area of about forty acres – quite a bit smaller than the walled enclave where I grew up, but the same idea. Snot lived in a crudely thatched wooden hovel, with a pile of grubby bowls and some smouldering embers in one corner for a kitchen, complete with running water when it rained and the roof leaked. I tried to imagine the crusty inhabitants, the squalid sieve-like huts and muddy pathways of this much simpler age, I couldn't help thinking that, even in its earliest years, Nottingham was a bit of a rat-hole.

  History never really interested me when I was five: I couldn't see what relevance it had. But now I think I can see why people are attracted to it: they find it reassuring to know that things haven't always been as they are now and, by implication, might be different – hopefully better – in the future. Either that, or they like to know that things used to be much dirtier and more violent so that the present day seems more attractive by comparison. At least these days our hovels are of a much higher quality. Some of them. Snot would have felt at home in the place Nathan and I were sharing in the outskirts.

  Raoul and Phyllis had a neat little apartment at the back of the repair shop. I'd been spending quite a bit of time at the shop, performing some of the simpler repairs, and learning from Raoul as he tackled the complicated ones. The dinner was a sort of thank you for my help. Phyllis was out for the evening, gone to the bingo or a meeting of the local coven or something, so this was to be a boys' night in. As well as the meal, Raoul had something else for me to look forward to, something he had promised me I would find interesting. If it turned out to be a butterfly-tattooed buttock or a Prince Albert, I was out of there never to return.

  "It's Speghetti Bolognese," Raoul said.

  "I'm sorry?" I said.

  "I only ever learned to cook two thinks when I was at university," he said. "Speghetti Bolognese and chili cen carne."

  "Didn't you get bored, eating the same two things over and over?" I asked, just to make conversation.

  "Oh, yes. Then I used to send out for pizza."

  I was glad he'd gone for the spaghetti: inexpert use of oregano would have far less devastating side effects than chili spice overkill.

  Raoul hadn't seemed surprised the first time I'd showed up at the repair shop without Nathan. In fact, he seemed to be expecting me. Maybe he even knew what it was that had drawn me back there, and if he did, he knew more than I did. The place was a dump and I wouldn't have wasted my time trashing the robots Raoul spent his days fixing. But there was something about the old man that intrigued me: he was like a wizard or a medicine man or something.

  "I've brought you some spares," I'd said on my first solo visit. "Just some servos and stuff I salvaged." It had sounded pretty lame to me, just an excuse to come back and see what the old man was up to, but Raoul seemed genuinely pleased with the stuff I'd brought. And reluctant to take it.

  "You know I can't pay you much for this," he'd said. "If you take it to one of the reclamation merchants down at the market, you'd get a better price."

  I shrugged, embarrassed. "The money's not important. I figured it'd be put to good use here."

  Raoul smiled, rubbed his hands together and emptied out the sack, began sorting out the items he had immediate uses for.

  It was still early days, and Nathan and me were still enjoying the adventure of it all. And we had the remains of my money to live on. There was enough left that we weren't ready to start worrying about what to do when my no-name credit rods were juiced-out. I suppose we'd grown up a lot since we'd been fending for ourselves, but we were still closer to being kids than adults. It was like being on holiday. Not having to work for a living meant we had lots of time to fill, and we filled it by coming up with really clever ways to make robots and corporations look really stupid.

  The walls of our room in The Outskirts were covered with pictures from the news services showing immobile robots sitting in the fountain in the Market Square, or trying to force their heads into the mouths of the stone lions, or sitting on public toilets: we regarded these efforts as a sort of improvised street sculpture. We got national news coverage when we had another go at Talos Industries' city centre building site. Construction robots were still putting up the new robot showroom and somehow the news services got advance notice that something was going to happen on the site after dark. They set up cameras and filmed the constructor robots erecting part of the structure during the day, and then carefully dismantling it again when the sun went down. They broadcast the footage at high speed, showing several hour's activity in only a few seconds, adding to the amusement factor of the story. The construction robots had deconstructed each other before the repair teams reached the scene, and there was no evidence left to prove that the machines had been tampered with.

  Raoul opened a bottle of wine and we sat at the table while the pasta sauce simmered away on the stove in the little kitchen. Placemats and cutlery sat ready for dinner, but the old man still had bits of robot in front of him to take apart. His hands were never still.

  "How's Nathan?" Raoul asked me this every time I turned up.

  "Good," I said. "He's building another motorbike."

  Raoul looked at me but didn't say anything: he knew how Nathan had lost his arm.

  "It's good that he's doing something constructive," I said. Raoul just nodded and sipped his wine. It was a thick red wine, that Raoul had made himself. From beetroot. It had that earthy taste that beetroot has, and I was pretty sure it was going to turn my tongue black and my pee red. I took little sips and tried not to grimace.

  "Are there many people like Nathan, with limbs that need fixing?" I asked.

  "In the conurbations there are dozens. Victims of terrorist bombs – playground mines, that sort of thing. Some are ex-soldiers, some victims of accidents, diabetes or cancer. Most of them hev no savings, weren't entitled to any kind of compensation, and there's no medical insurance unless you belong to a company, now that state support has been 'suspended.' They all have badly made prostheses which need constant maintenance. I do what I can."

  "How come you ended up here?" I asked.

  Raoul looked up from the foot he was dismantling.

  "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry," I said.

  "No, no, it's not thet. I suppose there should be some reason why I'm here, some secret scandal which got me thrown out for melpractice or scientific heresy. But it wasn't really anything that interesting. The university where I worked – doing cybernetics research – became interested in the area of replacement limbs. This was during the Oil Wars and the chaos that followed on the home front. Lend mines had been used quite widely to protect property during the worst of the unrest, and now there were news stories about innocent civilians and children being injured by forgotten landmines. This had been happening in Third World countries for decades, of course, but because it was happening at home, we got grants and bequests for our work. The Falchion Corporation were sponsoring my research.

  "Then the story dropped out of the news, displaced by another war thet attracted the journalists in flak jackets; the funding dried up, and the university's interest faded. Falchion withdrew their support, moved on to funding something more newsworthy, I suppose. But the victims were still out there: growing children need replacement limbs every year, and adult patients need regular maintenance of theirs.

  "We – some c
olleagues and I – left the university to set up a foundation, but couldn't attract enough sponsorship. My partners eventually went back to working for the companies. But I couldn't," Raoul shrugged. "I used my own money, begged for supplies, and eventually turned to using salvaged parts. Started repairing robots to make some money... I keep kidding myself that one day I'll be able to make the foundation work, but – "

  He refilled our glasses.

  "Nathan said that you've been carrying on your research here, that you're still trying to develop a more reliable kind of prosthetic limb," I said.

  Raoul nodded. "Thet's where most of my money has gone. It's also the one thing that has kept me going. Motors and clumsy mechanical systems mean that prosthetic arms and hands often melfunction: I wanted to create a system which didn't rely on mechanical parts. I've done it too, you know: at least, I've developed the basic system. I need a little more time to create my prototype limb, but I'm almost there."

  "Couldn't you get funding for your work from one of the major companies?" I asked.

  "Not for research into prosthetics. Artificial limbs aren't big business. Of course, if I told them I was developing a system which would revolutionise the field of robotics, they'd be queuing at my door to give me money, but then the original purpose of my work would be lost: the design of robot limbs would be improved to the point of perfection, but research into limbs for amputees would be side-tracked, and eventually forgotten. Not commercially viable, you see. It's not something they could make sexy commercials about.

  "There is also the stigma of disability, too. Physical disability often has such a psychological aspect: a person sees themselves as incomplete, defective. Society's response to their condition reinforces this view. If we could provide replacement limbs which are perfect in every detail, reliable, indistinguishable from a real human limb, think of the benefit to someone like Nathan. To enable them to feel that they were whole people again, and to be able to have people treat you like a person.

  "I can't change society's attitude toward physical disability – would that I could – but I believe I can give people the option of making the most of what society has to offer. The human world is designed for a six-foot tall biped, with two arms and ten fingers: that's one of the reasons why robots were eventually built in the shape of men. Doors, stairs, telephones, motor vehicles – all designed for a typical human form. My research is at a vital stage, and we should soon be able to see the true value of it," he smiled. "I have created an artificial muscle fibre which will enable me to build replacement limbs which look and function exactly like their human counterparts."

  His eyes burned brightly, and I wondered for a moment whether this obsession of his might not have driven him mad.

  "Come, there's something I want you to see." He stood up. He seemed excited, and I guessed he'd reached some important stage in his work which he wanted to celebrate with someone. I'd seen his 'laboratory' – it was in a room at the back of the workshop, and was more Invisible Man than Frankenstein, lots of chemicals and stuff, not much electronic equipment. No foot-long sparks. No reanimated cadavers. I expected him to take me through there, but instead he went over to the 'fridge.

  "There! What do you think?"

  It was a jar filled with a cloudy yellowish fluid, like an unhealthy urine specimen, and floating in it was a thick clump of incredibly fine white hair. A sort of pickled toupee, if you will.

  "I thought you were making Bolognese sauce?" I said.

  "This is the muscle fibre. It's taken me ten years to get it to this stage."

  "You sure you've got the right jar?"

  "I know it doesn't look like much," Raoul said. "But it will revolutionise the manufacture of medical prosthetics."

  I knew he was going to explain all about his muscle fibre design, and I was trying to fix my face with a look of intelligent interest, hoping that he wouldn't notice when my eyes glazed over and my thoughts began to wander. No such luck: Raoul was the sort of person who explained things in ever simpler terms until he was sure you'd got the hang of it.

  "People have been trying to come up with a suitable way of simulating the workings of human muscles for years: hydraulics work for something the size of a mechanical digger, but aren't responsive enough to operate the joints of a finger.

  "Different kinds of sponges, fibres and springs have been tried, materials that expand and contract when an electrical or chemical stimulus is applied, that sort of thing. But no one has ever managed to obtain the kind of results that would make an artificial muscle feasible. Not surprisingly really, when you consider what we expect of our muscles." He pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, exposing a pale ropey arm. "Just think about an arm," he said. "From the shoulder to the fingertips. Think about the number of different joints, and the movements allowed by the muscles controlling them. There's the instantaneous jerk response when you accidentally touch something hot; the slow, steady curve as you draw or paint; the brute strength as you lift a suitcase; the precision as you type individual characters on a keyboard."

  He'd never seen me type.

  "Couple that with the problem of trying to mimic a sensitive system of touch in artificial fingertips, and the idea of a prosthetic arm which is as good as a genuine one seems an absurd dream. Compared to your arm, a robot's limb is a crude, clumsy device: bulky motorised mechanisms control motion up and down at the elbow, but lateral rotation is impossible without another motor. And the stop-start jerkiness of these mechanics makes smooth motion very difficult: when you raise your arm, there is an acceleration from rest up to a maximum speed, and then a deceleration, no matter how quickly the action seems to take place, there is this smoothness to it, which a machine has difficulty in duplicating. Plus you have the ability to stop a movement almost instantly, and reverse the direction. And when you lift an object, you can continuously monitor and adjust its position."

  He went to refill our glasses, but the bottle was empty.

  "How do you make something that is light-weight, strong, capable of lifting great weights without stretching, yet capable of subtle movements in finger muscles? Something which can react instantly to save you from danger, yet which is capable of the slow, graceful movement of a ballet dancer? Something suitable for a leg muscle which can support the weight of your whole body, and that of your bride when you carry her across the threshold, and for the muscles in the finger which caresses her skin?

  "The answer was quite simple. Spaghetti."

  "Yes, please," I said.

  "No, I mean spaghetti was the answer. This is where I got my inspiration, at that very stove," he turned round in his seat and nodded towards the kitchen area. "In a few minutes, I'll try to get the contents of that saucepan onto two plates, but it'll all come together."

  "Because all the strands are tangled up," I said.

  "Exactly. But why is it all tangled together?"

  I shrugged.

  "Does tinned spaghetti come out all tangled together?" Raoul asked.

  "No, but that's short pieces, they don't get tangled."

  "Right. So when spaghetti is in little strands, it moves quite freely, and quickly. But when it is in long strands, it moves more slowly, behaves more like a solid lump.

  "Now, suppose I had something that could change from being short, easily moving strands, to long, slow moving strands when I applied a small electrical current say, or a chemical stimulus, and that I could vary the size of the strand by varying the size of the electrical or chemical stimulus, therefore control how tangled they became?

  "When I wanted quick release, I'd have short strands, when I needed slower movement, or greater strength, I'd have long strands. At a moment's notice, I'd be able to change from one to the other, but at all times, the movement would be the smooth sliding of one strand of spaghetti against another."

  "And that came to you in a flash of inspiration, while you were cooking Spaghetti Bolognese?"

  "Yes. But that was the easy bit: the difficult part was co
ming up with a polymer that behaved the way I wanted it to behave. That took years of experimentation. But I cracked it, eventually; about three months ago, in fact. I have a fibre that really works, which expands and contracts like a real muscle fibre, and which can be used to build up any size of muscle. I've been growing it in the lab for a while now, and I should be able to create a prototype limb soon. If it works, well..." He shrugged, and then slumped, a look of intense sadness on his face. "I think you'd better 'phone for a pizza," he said.

  "Why?"

  "The Bolognese sauce is on fire."

  Chapter Six 

  Nathan and I stole a big old BMW 4x4 for our journey out of the city. An air car would have been faster, but neither of us had ever flown one. And after dark it's safer to stick to the old highway. There's more illegal air traffic outside the city limits, mostly kids on souped-up sky bikes. To escape detection, they use home-brew devices to jam radar, making them invisible to the police and other travellers. And to each other. Accidents were common. And for the bikers, usually fatal. The BMW had the standard anti-carjacking hardware, so we felt reasonably secure. Nathan was slumped in the passenger seat. He'd had a couple of drinks and had called up a blues channel on the car's music unit. I hadn't touched the bourbon, but I was feeling pretty mellow too.