Robot Wrecker

by Paul Tomlinson

  "This is Ayana," Milo Bryce said.

  The film showed a medium close-up of a beautiful little black girl against an unfocused backdrop of a wall made from what appeared to be woven grass. "She was out playing with her friends in a field near the village, when she tripped. There was a land mine hidden in the dirt, close to where she fell."

  The camera pulled back to reveal her right arm as a bandaged stump, ending at the elbow. Bryce continued his narration.

  "There are literally thousands of mines littering the fields and hills here, left-overs from guerrilla and tribal wars. Every week brings new innocent victims of these terrible weapons to this little hospital."

  The screen was filled with an image of a fairly primitive hospital in a village which could have been in any one of hundreds of developing nations. The patients – some on crutches, others without arms, some having lost both legs – were children. The adults had been shepherded indoors: injured children made for better TV.

  "Throughout the world, there are dozens of areas with the same problem. Dozens of hospitals like this one.

  "Until now, a lost leg would have meant a crude plastic replacement and the possibility of a lifetime on crutches. A lost arm, at best, would have resulted in something like this."

  Close-up of a plastic arm with an ugly-looking pincer arrangement in place of a hand: a complex system of wires enabled the pincer to open and close awkwardly.

  "Today, things are very different: children like Ayana will be able to lead an almost normal life, thanks to a new kind of replacement limb, developed by a British scientist."

  A white twin-rotor helicopter was shown sitting incongruously in a clearing behind the village. As well as the Red Cross, it featured The Minos Technologies logo prominently, and less obviously the words The Zacharias Foundation.

  "Thanks to the pioneering work of Doctor Raoul Zacharias, children like Ayana are able to play again."

  The film showed Ayana now, apparently, with two normal arms, running around the village, throwing a brightly coloured football to her friends, and catching it when it was thrown to her.

  "Her prosthetic arm looks and behaves just like her real one. There will be occasional visits to the doctor who will ensure that the limb continues to function properly, and as she grows, the arm will be replaced several times, but these inconveniences are a small price to pay for the freedom it will bring her.

  "The story of how this new form of replacement limb progressed from a prototype in a scientist's laboratory in Britain to a standard treatment for amputees visiting this mobile clinic here in an African village, is as strange a tale as any found in the movies. It is a tale that begins here, in a run-down area of the City of Nottingham. It was in a tiny laboratory in these less than pleasant surroundings, that Raoul Zacharias made a breakthrough which would eventually revolutionise both the fields of human prosthetics and the manufacture of android robots. He created an artificial muscle fibre which enabled the creation of limbs that looked and operated exactly like natural human limbs.

  "It was an invention that soon attracted the attention of Talos Industries: they wanted the muscle fibre, and they were prepared to go to any lengths to get it. What followed was a bizarre sequence of events that involved theft, industrial espionage, urban terrorism, murder, and the solution to the mystery of Jack the Wrecker. Join us after the break for the complete story."

  Medium close-up in slow motion of the little African girl catching the ball and laughing. The ball carried the MinoTech logo.

  "Did you see it?" Raoul asked. He was standing in the doorway of my room pointing at the television. Raoul was grinning like a loon.

  "What's wrong with him?" I asked.

  "I think he's happy," Phyllis said.

  "Why is he happy?"

  Phyllis shrugged. "Someone has to be," she said. She ducked out for a smoke.

  "We've won," Raoul said, still smiling: maybe he was brain-damaged after all. "Really won," he said. "We're going to get the prosthetics made. They're calling it The Zecharias Foundation."

  "Raoul, that was a commercial for Minos Technologies," I said, nodding at the television. "They're doing it for the publicity."

  "Their motives don't matter, as long as they do it," Raoul said. "The only important thing is for those who are in need to get help. And I'll be around to keep an eye on things in an executive capacity: the moment their good intentions seem to be slipping, I'll get a message to your friend Mr. Bryce, and we'll deliver a public reminder to them."

  "You really think it'll work out?" I asked.

  "It's the closest I've gotten so far to achieving a lifelong ambition: I'm prepared to go along with it if there's any chance thet it will work."

  "MinoTech will still make obscene amounts of money from robots made using the muscle fibre," I said.

  "That was always going to happen, Stevie," Raoul said. "I've agreed that the design will be licensed to several companies eventually, Minos will have a head-start, but after that they will have to compete with their rivals on an equal footing in the market place. As far as I'm concerned, things have turned out about as well as I could have expected."

  "Okay, I'm happy for you," I said.

  "When you're recovered, you can come down and stay with us for a while," Raoul said. "You need a holiday. We've found a nice little place about a mile-and-a-half from the sea, a real house. There's a garage I can use for a workshop. There's so many old people down there, Stevie, you wouldn't believe it. And they've all got robot poodles or ancient mechanical robots. I can work in my spare time, keep my hand in, you know. Demmit, it's time we retired anyway."

  "You're leaving Nottingham?" I asked.

  "Didn't I say thet? Phyllis wants to move south, to be near her sister."

  I should have been happy for them, I know, but all I could think was What about me? Seems they had that all worked out too.

  "We want you to hev the repair shop," Raoul said. "I know it's not much on the face of it, but if you wanted to, you could really build the business up again. We've let it run down over the last few years, I guess it was getting too much for us really. But with a younger man at the helm – well, who knows?"

  "I'll take good care of it," I promised.

  "I know you will. As soon as Phyllis and I get the first of the money from MinoTech, we'll invest some of it in the repair shop, help you really get it going again. And you will come down and stay with us soon, won't you?"

  "Sure."

  "Take care of yourself, Stevie."

  "When did you start waxing your chest?" Beth asked. She'd got rid of the crutches, but was still limping a little.

  "When do you start dancing lessons?" I asked.

  "As soon as you're back on your feet, partner."

  It seemed that Phyllis and Raoul had told Beth all about my taking over the repair shop, and she wanted to be part of it, maybe expand the operation to include servicing and repairing CG suits. She thought the two of us could make a go of it. Beth wasn't going back to being a police woman, and she was looking for a new career.

  "What do you know about fixing robots?" I asked.

  "A fortnight ago, I knew nothing, but Raoul's been giving me a crash course," Beth said. "I now know exactly where to hit them with a hammer – "

  I shook my head.

  "You think I'm not up to it?" Beth asked.

  "Let's just say, I remain to be convinced," I said.

  "What'll it take to convince you?" She asked. "It'd have to be something pretty dramatic, wouldn't it? I know, I'll ask SAM what he thinks would work."

  The big black robot entered the room carrying a bag of grapes and a bottle of Lucozade.

  Wow, I'd already inherited my own scrap yard, and now I was going to be sharing it with a piano-playing robot and an ex-policewoman who couldn't dance. Who says there's no such thing as happy ever after?

  "We all saw the news stories, so we know what went on here at Talos Tower," Milo Bryce said to his TV audience. "But I thought you migh
t like to see this piece of film."

  It was footage of the demolition men moving in to tear down what was left of the building. It was somehow satisfying to see this final piece of explosive destruction, but as I watched the building collapse into a ballooning cloud of dust, there was one thought which kept this from being the best possible ending to the story: It was a damn shame Talos Industries hadn't made their headquarters in Nottingham's so-called 'castle'.

  Acknowledgements

  Harry Harrison, who was my hero, my mentor, and my friend from 1984 until his death in August 2012. I miss you, old man.

  Michael Carroll, who has read every draft of this novel since the first one in the early 1990s, and always tries to convince me that I’m a much better writer than I really am. Thank you for all the encouragement.

  Isaac Asimov, who created robots that were more than metal monsters.

  Mel Hunter and Ralph McQuarrie, who showed us what robots looked like.

  George Lucas, who put C3P0 and R2D2 in Star Wars, and who, for the first time, put on screen the images I saw in my head when I read science fiction.

  Bob Shaw, whose novel Terminal Velocity inspired the ‘counter-gravity suits’ in Robot Wrecker.

  James Cameron, Gale Anne Hurd and Stan Winston, who made robots scary again in The Terminator.

  The creators of the Max Headroom TV movie that aired on Channel 4 in the UK in 1985.

  The creators of the Japanese anime series Bubblegum Crisis and the guys at AnimEigo, who made it available with English subtitles. And also the people at Manga Video who brought anime to the UK.

  Ridley Scott and everyone else behind Blade Runner, a film that defined the look of science fiction for the ‘cyberpunk’ generation.

  The team behind Doctor Who from 1972 to 1980, which for me was the ‘golden age.’ And a tip of the hat to John Nathan Turner, who sent me my first ever rejection letter.

  John Jarrold, who read the first six chapters and gave me notes on some things to fix and to cut.

  Sean Naden and Sean Griffiths, for Rise of the Robots: I never played the game, but the artwork from an Amiga computer magazine made it into my scrapbook.

  And my parents, Dot and Bill, who used to think I’d grow out of this science fiction nonsense... 

  About the Author

  Paul Tomlinson was born in Nottingham, England, in 1966. He was first drawn into science fiction by the Jon Pertwee era of Doctor Who, and at the age of ten read his first SF novel, Harry Harrison’s Spaceship Medic. He contributed to the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fanzine Mostly Harmless, and then went on to create a Harry Harrison fanzine, Parallel Worlds in the mid-1980s. A number of his interviews with SF and fantasy authors were published in Starlog and Starburst magazines. 

  In 1999, he teamed up with author Michael Carroll to create the Official Harry Harrison Website, and in 2002 compiled Harry Harrison: An Annotated Bibliography, published by Cosmos Books. He worked for Harry Harrison on a number of projects, including OCRing the stories for the 50 in 50 collection (2001), and assisting with the author’s autobiography, which was published in 2014.

  Robot Wrecker is Paul Tomlinson’s first science fiction novel. He is also the author of the mystery novel The Sword in the Stone-Dead.

  For free short stories, articles, and e-books, visit the author's website:

  www.paultomlinson.org