We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  ‘PROFESSOR NOGO wished to be informed what amount of automaton police force it was proposed to raise in the first instance.

  ‘MR. COPPERNOSE replied, that it was proposed to begin with seven divisions of police of a score each, lettered from A to G inclusive. It was proposed that not more than half this number should be placed on active duty, and that the remainder should be kept on shelves in the police office ready to be called out at a moment’s notice.

  ‘THE PRESIDENT, awarding the utmost merit to the ingenious gentleman who had originated the idea, doubted whether the automaton police would quite answer the purpose. He feared that noblemen and gentlemen would perhaps require the excitement of thrashing living subjects.

  ‘MR. COPPERNOSE submitted, that as the usual odds in such cases were ten noblemen or gentlemen to one policeman or cab-driver, it could make very little difference in point of excitement whether the policeman or cab-driver were a man or a block. The great advantage would be, that a policeman’s limbs might be all knocked off, and yet he would be in a condition to do duty next day. He might even give his evidence next morning with his head in his hand, and give it equally well.

  ‘PROFESSOR MUFF.—Will you allow me to ask you, sir, of what materials it is intended that the magistrates’ heads shall be composed?

  ‘MR. COPPERNOSE.—The magistrates will have wooden heads of course, and they will be made of the toughest and thickest materials that can possibly be obtained.

  ‘PROFESSOR MUFF.—I am quite satisfied. This is a great invention.

  ‘PROFESSOR NOGO.—I see but one objection to it. It appears to me that the magistrates ought to talk.

  ‘MR. COPPERNOSE no sooner heard this suggestion than he touched a small spring in each of the two models of magistrates which were placed upon the table; one of the figures immediately began to exclaim with great volubility that he was sorry to see gentlemen in such a situation, and the other to express a fear that the policeman was intoxicated.

  ‘The section, as with one accord, declared with a shout of applause that the invention was complete; and the President, much excited, retired with Mr. Coppernose to lay it before the council. On his return,

  ‘MR. TICKLE displayed his newly-invented spectacles, which enabled the wearer to discern, in very bright colours, objects at a great distance, and rendered him wholly blind to those immediately before him. It was, he said, a most valuable and useful invention, based strictly upon the principle of the human eye.

  ‘THE PRESIDENT required some information upon this point. He had yet to learn that the human eye was remarkable for the peculiarities of which the honourable gentleman had spoken.

  ‘MR. TICKLE was rather astonished to hear this, when the President could not fail to be aware that a large number of most excellent persons and great statesmen could see, with the naked eye, most marvellous horrors on West India plantations, while they could discern nothing whatever in the interior of Manchester cotton mills. He must know, too, with what quickness of perception most people could discover their neighbour’s faults, and how very blind they were to their own. If the President differed from the great majority of men in this respect, his eye was a defective one, and it was to assist his vision that these glasses were made.

  ‘MR. BLANK exhibited a model of a fashionable annual, composed of copper-plates, gold leaf, and silk boards, and worked entirely by milk and water.

  ‘MR. PROSEE, after examining the machine, declared it to be so ingeniously composed, that he was wholly unable to discover how it went on at all.

  ‘MR. BLANK.—Nobody can, and that is the beauty of it.’

  (1837–1838)

  FULLY AUTOMATED NOSTALGIA CAPITALISM

  Dan Grace

  Dan Grace lives in Sheffield. His debut novella, Winter, published by Unsung Stories in 2016, is the violent tale of Britain after the failure of the Union. Grace lives with his partner and son in Sheffield. When he isn’t writing he works as a librarian and is studying (“very slowly”) towards a PhD examining the role of libraries in building resilient communities.

  “Those fries won’t fry themselves.”

  I nod. I find it easier not to say too much. My boss is the typical character. A thin skin of hyper-enthusiasm stretched tight over a bitter black chasm of self-loathing. Whoever he really is, he plays the part well.

  The thing is these fries would fry themselves.

  Authenticity is what we strive for in our particular establishment. That genuine late twentieth century fast food experience, before the pretence of health, when your food shone grease-coated beneath the neon sign of progress. And we do a pretty good job, better than many other places. The salt level is absurd, the fat content astronomical, and the pressed carcass-housing patties grey and bland despite this.

  I could give you an exact breakdown of the chemical content of one meal here and the effect on your body, but you could do just the same in as quick a time. And it would be tailored of course. Your mites know the numbers you want and the numbers you don’t.

  *

  I remember the first human teacher I ever saw. I mean in the flesh, not on a screen. I was nine or ten. The elections were over and there hadn’t been as much violence as had been predicted. Dad was still up the morning after watching the results come in, with his friends from the Party. They looked glum.

  “Pessimism of the intellect, pessimism of the will,” he muttered when I asked if we’d won. I had no idea what he was on about.

  I arrived at school as usual and instead of the screen there was an old man at the front of the class. Mr Griffiths. He told us that he’d be teaching us from now on. That the country had spoken. That things were going to change.

  How wrong can you possibly be, whilst still being right?

  *

  I get here at seven thirty every morning and get the place set up. It’s a short crowded bus ride from the four bare walls of my studio apartment. Every day I watch the others, got up in styles spanning the decades, heading for their day at work. Each life a perfect arc, everything known, heading for a facsimile of life when nothing, comparatively, was known. A lived nostalgia for the sweet ignorance before the numbers.

  I always smoke my first cig of the day on the walk from the bus stop. Routine. If I close my eyelids I can pull up the image of the smoke filling my bronchioles, overlaid with a stream of information on how the chemicals they lace these things with are destroying me. And how efficiently the mites are scrubbing them from me and repairing my broken cells. It’s an add-on to the pulmonary health, new release. Beta but pretty stable.

  I choose this role as it gives me time to think.

  No, that’s a lie. I choose this role because it doesn’t matter which role I choose.

  *

  Of course things changed. Nothing is permanent.

  Dad was arrested six months after the election. I never saw him again. Mum wouldn’t let me go along on the visits. And then the visits stopped. He may still be alive somewhere for all I know. It was all so long ago.

  The border was closed, with much rejoicing from certain sectors of society. Those of us who felt otherwise kept our heads down. Now was not the time.

  To be truthful politics was only ever a reflex for me, something absorbed through listening to mum and dad and their friends, and like most reflexes it faded over time when not exercised.

  Part of me knew all this could have been different. Another part of me pushed that thought deep down inside.

  *

  I lift the fryer to let the oil drain from the fries, tap it a couple of times on the frame, then tip them into a broad metal dish set below heat lamps and shake salt into them. I spill some on the floor.

  I always get distracted by the light outside. This time of morning it cuts between a gap in the shops opposite, a record store circa 1982 and a mobile device shop somewhere in the late ’10s, and spreads its bright fingers all the way to the kitchen here at the back.

  It reminds me of something. I’m just not sure wha
t.

  *

  Not all technology was bad, of course. State approved tech became effectively compulsory. You didn’t have to have it, but you became a pariah if you didn’t, and with the borders closed, where were you going to go?

  And it was always bundled up in a pithy rationale. Sterilisation mites to save the planet. Monitoring mites to ease the burden on the NHS. Communication mites because that’s just what the future is supposed to be like, isn’t it?

  *

  It’s late in the morning and she’s coming through the door. Her hair is blonde, long, pinned up in a bun. She’s wearing slightly too large polyester slacks and a fitted white work shirt with a black bra underneath. Her shoes are hidden beneath the flared ends of her trouser legs, but I guess they’d look worn. She’s an office temp, circa 2007–8. A little incongruous in our staunchly mid-90s establishment.

  She stands in a puddle of light and scrutinises the garish menu display board. I watch the way she rubs at her eye, scratches her hip, shifts her weight as she feigns decision. I step up to the till point.

  “I got this, Shirley.”

  Shirley jerks her head like she’s never heard anything so crazy. I realise I’ve never said anything to her before. She steps back and picks at her hair net. This isn’t part of the script. The woman steps forward, eyes still on the menu board.

  “Uh, I’ll have a happy meal. I think.”

  She forgets to capitalise. I note my mites noting my elevated heart rate, the increased adrenaline.

  “Happy Meal. You know that’s for kids, right?”

  She looks straight at me, squinting in the reflected light from the deep fat fryer.

  “Sure I do. I’m just feeling a little blue. Thought it might cheer me up.”

  Her eyes are grey. No, blue. No, grey.

  “Um. It doesn’t really work like that.”

  She smiles. There’s a gap between her two front teeth. Small, but noticeable.

  “I know.”

  I nod.

  “OK then. One Happy Meal coming right up.”

  She smiles again.

  *

  “Nostalgia is an illness.”

  That’s what my dad always used to say. Mainly in response to the endless parade of well qualified grifters harking back to some imagined past perfection. I can see him shaking his head at what we do now, how we live our lives. Reality has become a parody of simplistic media tropes. Low budget period dramas minus the drama.

  We’ll beg forgiveness from our children (optimistic) with the usual set of excuses. It happened slowly, through a series of seemingly inevitable and sensible small changes presented as a fait accompli by well-meaning rich white men in suits.

  Why did we trust them? You’re referring, of course, to the several hundred years of history pointing to this particular group as being sociopathic ghouls intent on nothing less than the enslavement of the rest of the population I assume?

  Well yes. I get that now. Many of us do.

  *

  We end up back at my place on my lunch break. The mites did the calculations, pinged one another, saw the match and we just went with it. Of course. Follow the numbers and it’ll all be fine.

  She watches me pad to my bag to fetch my cigs. I hold the open pack out to her.

  “Want one?”

  She shakes her head and rolls onto her back. We lounge naked in the light from the velux, watching the smoke curl fractals against the blue, blue sky. I stub the cig in an old coffee mug and stand up to open the window a crack.

  Half-hearted birdsong floats in through the gap.

  “I got to get back.”

  She rolls on her side and watches me dress. The mites are reporting an increase in oxytocin, amongst other things. She shifts on to her elbow.

  “You ever wonder about all this?”

  I look down at her.

  “Wonder?”

  “How we can have anything and we choose this?”

  She gestures with her hand to my room, my coffee mug full of cig butts. I stare at her then lift my eyes to look out the velux, across the rooftops of the city.

  “The endless repeating. The roles. The mites. The numbers. I mean, who’s in charge here?”

  I nod. I notice my mites noticing my heart rate climbing again.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  And I kneel and kiss her and head back to work.

  *

  Much of what passes for dissent now is just more role play. From ‘strikes’ to re-enactments of Orgreave or the Carnival Against Capitalism. Carefully calibrated pressure valves.

  Yet there are cracks. The Party was banned, members arrested, but dissent will find a way. You hear of things happening that shouldn’t happen. An underground. A loosening of the grip.

  *

  She’s waiting for me when I finish up. Shivering in the chill spring air. I’m a little shocked.

  “Hey.”

  She smiles.

  “Hey. You want to come to a party?”

  “A party? What sort of party?”

  She shrugs.

  “You know, just a party. Music, dancing and so on.”

  I want to go home. To stare at the blank walls. Watch the view through the velux window.

  So I’m surprised when I say yes.

  *

  The mathematicians are in the back, masked up, physically and digitally. I am terrified. She takes my hand and leads me through the mass of bodies to one of them, gives me a look. I nod.

  She hands them cash. They do something with a tiny computer, touch two electrodes to the skin on my wrist where the veins show. Then the same for her.

  It comes on slowly, like the tide coming in. Wave after tiny wave of something beautiful. We move onto the dance floor. 90s jungle shakes my rib cage, the beat matches the ever increasing waves and

  oh

  like I’m drowning

  in a good way

  did I ever tell you

  yes

  what is this

  yes

  what is this

  yes

  a very good way

  did I

  love you love all of you always

  they never knew

  we’ll leave the city go to the hills you know the hills a farm I visited one when I was a kid I can’t believe you grew up so close and we never met I wish we’d met before in a previous life or something

  I had a dog he was he was he was

  in a good way though

  who are you

  are you

  you and me

  me and you

  in a very good way

  we

  *

  Whose grip are we loosening?

  *

  We wake and disentangle. We are breached walls hastily patched to meet the new day. We smoke and don’t say a thing.

  I feel around inside myself. It seems OK, nothing obviously broken. Ready to go.

  We shower, dress and head out into the weak sunlight.

  I think she is going to say something, the way her body tenses, the drop of her head, but she doesn’t. I try to think of something to say. The mites seem a little sluggish this morning, like they’ve taken a beating and are still feeling groggy. The moment stretches. The sky is so blue it makes my throat ache.

  “See you tonight?”

  She smiles.

  “I’ll meet you at eight, outside your place, OK?”

  I nod and we part with a kiss, each our separate ways, to work.

  (2017)

  THE MAN-UFACTORY

  Frederic Perkins

  Frederic Beecher Perkins (1828–1899) was the Bostonian author of two comic novels, a biography of Charles Dickens, and around fifty sketches and short stories. “What seemed best,” he wrote, “I used to offer to Putnam or Harper. What they would not use I sometimes offered to Peterson’s Magazine, sometimes to the Philadelphia Saturday Evening Post, and so on; and what I could not otherwise use I could always sell to the New York Sunday Dispatch for
five dollars.” His daughter Catherine, a prominent feminist and social campaigner, wrote that he “took to books as a duck to water. He read them, he wrote them, he edited them, he criticized them, he became a librarian and classified them. Before he married he knew nine languages and continued to learn more afterward… In those days, when scholarship could still cover a large portion of the world’s good books, he covered them well.” In 1880, Perkins was appointed as head librarian of the San Francisco Public Library, where he served till 1887.

  I was talking the other day with my friend Budlong, whom I met in New York after two or three years of separation, about the progress of the age, and especially about recent inventions. When I find any thing worth reading in the newspapers, I cut it out and carry it in my pocket-book for a few days, to read to all my friends; and then I put it in a scrapbook for all future generations. Much good may it do them!