We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  The publicity Robie drew stimulated investments handsomely. It was amusing to see the TV and newspaper coverage of Robie selling, but not a fraction as much fun as being approached personally by him. Those who were usually bought anywhere from one to five hundred shares, if they had any money and foresight enough to see that sales robots would eventually be on every street and highway in the country.

  *

  Robie radared the crowd, found that it surrounded him solidly, and stopped. With a carefully built-in sense of timing, he waited for the tension and expectation to mount before he began talking.

  “Say, Ma, he doesn’t look like a robot at all,” a child said. “He looks like a turtle.”

  Which was not completely inaccurate. The lower part of Robie’s body was a metal hemisphere hemmed with sponge rubber and not quite touching the sidewalk. The upper was a metal box with black holes in it. The box could swivel and duck.

  A chromium-bright hoopskirt with a turret on top.

  “Reminds me too much of the Little Joe Paratanks,” a legless veteran of the Persian War muttered, and rapidly rolled himself away on wheels rather like Robie’s.

  His departure made it easier for some of those who knew about Robie to open a path in the crowd. Robie headed straight for the gap. The crowd whooped.

  Robie glided very slowly down the path, deftly jogging aside whenever he got too close to ankles in skylon or sockassins. The rubber buffer on his hoopskirt was merely an added safeguard.

  The boy who had called Robie a turtle jumped in the middle of the path and stood his ground, grinning foxily.

  Robie stopped two feet short of him. The turret ducked. The crowd got quiet.

  “Hello, youngster,” Robie said in a voice that was smooth as that of a TV star, and was, in fact, a recording of one.

  The boy stopped smiling. “Hello,” he whispered.

  “How old are you?” Robie asked.

  “Nine. No, eight.”

  “That’s nice,” Robie observed. A metal arm shot down from his neck, stopped just short of the boy.

  The boy jerked back.

  “For you,” Robie said.

  The boy gingerly took the red polly-lop from the neatly fashioned blunt metal claws, and began to unwrap it.

  “Nothing to say?” asked Robie.

  “Uh—thank you.”

  After a suitable pause, Robie continued, “And how about a nice refreshing drink of Poppy Pop to go with your polly-lop?” The boy lifted his eyes, but didn’t stop licking the candy. Robie waggled his claws slightly. “Just give me a quarter and within five seconds—”

  A little girl wriggled out of the forest of legs. “Give me a polly-lop, too, Robie,” she demanded.

  “Rita, come back here!” a woman in the third rank of the crowd called angrily.

  Robie scanned the newcomer gravely. His reference silhouettes were not good enough to let him distinguish the sex of children, so he merely repeated, “Hello, youngster.”

  “Rita!”

  “Give me a polly-lop!”

  Disregarding both remarks, for a good salesman is singleminded and does not waste bait, Robie said winningly, “I’ll bet you read Junior Space Killers. Now I have here—”

  “Uh-uh, I’m a girl. He got a polly-lop.”

  *

  At the word “girl,” Robie broke off. Rather ponderously, he said, “I’ll bet you read Gee-Gee Jones, Space Stripper. Now I have here the latest issue of that thrilling comic, not yet in the stationary vending machines. Just give me fifty cents and within five—”

  “Please let me through. I’m her mother.”

  A young woman in the front rank drawled over her powder-sprayed shoulder, “I’ll get her for you,” and slithered out on six-inch platform shoes. “Run away, children,” she said nonchalantly. Lifting her arms behind her head, she pirouetted slowly before Robie to show how much she did for her bolero half-jacket and her form-fitting slacks that melted into skylon just above the knees. The little girl glared at her. She ended the pirouette in profile.

  At this age-level, Robie’s reference silhouettes permitted him to distinguish sex, though with occasional amusing and embarrassing miscalls. He whistled admiringly. The crowd cheered.

  Someone remarked critically to a friend, “It would go over better if he was built more like a real robot. You know, like a man.”

  The friend shook his head. “This way it’s subtler.”

  No one in the crowd was watching the newscript overhead as it scribbled, “Ice Pack for Hot Truce? Vanadin hints Russ may yield on Pakistan.”

  Robie was saying, “… in the savage new glamor-tint we have christened Mars Blood, complete with spray applicator and fit-all fingerstalls that mask each finger completely except for the nail. Just give me five dollars—uncrumpled bills may be fed into the revolving rollers you see beside my arm—and within five seconds—”

  “No, thanks, Robie,” the young woman yawned.

  “Remember,” Robie persisted, “for three more weeks, seductivizing Mars Blood will be unobtainable from any other robot or human vendor.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Robie scanned the crowd resourcefully. “Is there any gentleman here…” he began just as a woman elbowed her way through the front rank.

  “I told you to come back!” she snapped at the little girl.

  “But I didn’t get my polly-lop!”

  “… who would care to…”

  “Rita!”

  “Robie cheated. Ow!”

  *

  Meanwhile, the young woman in the half-bolero had scanned the nearby gentlemen on her own. Deciding that there was less than a fifty per cent chance of any of them accepting the proposition Robie seemed about to make, she took advantage of the scuffle to slither gracefully back into the ranks. Once again the path was clear before Robie.

  He paused, however, for a brief recapitulation of the more magical properties of Mars Blood, including a telling phrase about “the passionate claws of a Martian sunrise.”

  But no one bought. It wasn’t quite time. Soon enough silver coins would be clinking, bills going through the rollers faster than laundry, and five hundred people struggling for the privilege of having their money taken away from them by America’s first mobile sales robot.

  But there were still some tricks that Robie had to do free, and one certainly should enjoy those before starting the more expensive fun.

  So Robie moved on until he reached the curb. The variation in level was instantly sensed by his under-scanners. He stopped. His head began to swivel. The crowd watched in eager silence. This was Robie’s best trick.

  Robie’s head stopped swiveling. His scanners had found the traffic light. It was green. Robie edged forward. But then the light turned red. Robie stopped again, still on the curb. The crowd softly ahhed its delight.

  It was wonderful to be alive and watching Robie on such an exciting day. Alive and amused in the fresh, weather-controlled air between the lines of bright skyscrapers with their winking windows and under a sky so blue you could almost call it dark.

  (But way, way up, where the crowd could not see, the sky was darker still. Purple-dark, with stars showing. And in that purple-dark, a silver-green something, the color of a bud, plunged down at better than three miles a second. The silver-green was a newly developed paint that foiled radar.)

  Robie was saying, “While we wait for the light, there’s time for you youngsters to enjoy a nice refreshing Poppy Pop. Or for you adults—only those over five feet tall are eligible to buy—to enjoy an exciting Poppy Pop fizz. Just give me a quarter or—in the case of adults, one dollar and a quarter; I’m licensed to dispense intoxicating liquors—and within five seconds…”

  But that was not cutting it quite fine enough. Just three seconds later, the silver-green bud bloomed above Manhattan into a globular orange flower. The skyscrapers grew brighter and brighter still, the brightness of the inside of the Sun. The windows winked blossoming white fire-flowers.

 
The crowd around Robie bloomed, too. Their clothes puffed into petals of flame. Their heads of hair were torches.

  *

  The orange flower grew, stem and blossom. The blast came. The winking windows shattered tier by tier, became black holes. The walls bent, rocked, cracked. A stony dandruff flaked from their cornices. The flaming flowers on the sidewalk were all leveled at once. Robie was shoved ten feet. His metal hoopskirt dimpled, regained its shape.

  The blast ended. The orange flower, grown vast, vanished overhead on its huge, magic beanstalk. It grew dark and very still. The cornice-dandruff pattered down. A few small fragments rebounded from the metal hoopskirt.

  Robie made some small, uncertain movements, as if feeling for broken bones. He was hunting for the traffic light, but it no longer shone either red or green.

  He slowly scanned a full circle. There was nothing anywhere to interest his reference silhouettes. Yet whenever he tried to move, his under-scanners warned him of low obstructions. It was very puzzling.

  The silence was disturbed by moans and a crackling sound, as faint at first as the scampering of distant rats. A seared man, his charred clothes fuming where the blast had blown out the fire, rose from the curb. Robie scanned him.

  “Good day, sir,” Robie said. “Would you care for a smoke? A truly cool smoke? Now I have here a yet unmarketed brand…”

  But the customer had run away, screaming, and Robie never ran after customers, though he could follow them at a medium brisk roll. He worked his way along the curb where the man had sprawled, carefully keeping his distance from the low obstructions, some of which writhed now and then, forcing him to jog. Shortly he reached a fire hydrant. He scanned it. His electronic vision, though it still worked, had been somewhat blurred by the blast.

  “Hello, youngster,” Robie said. Then, after a long pause, “Cat got your tongue? Well, I have a little present for you. A nice, lovely polly-lop.

  “Take it, youngster,” he said after another pause. “It’s for you. Don’t be afraid.”

  His attention was distracted by other customers, who began to rise oddly here and there, twisting forms that confused his reference silhouettes and would not stay to be scanned properly. One cried, “Water,” but no quarter clinked in Robie’s claws when he caught the word and suggested, “How about a nice refreshing drink of Poppy Pop?”

  The rat-crackling of the flames had become a jungle muttering. The blind windows began to wink fire again.

  *

  A little girl marched, stepping neatly over arms and legs she did not look at. A white dress and the once taller bodies around her had shielded her from the brilliance and the blast. Her eyes were fixed on Robie. In them was the same imperious confidence, though none of the delight, with which she had watched him earlier.

  “Help me, Robie,” she said. “I want my mother.”

  “Hello, youngster,” Robie said. “What would you like? Comics? Candy?”

  “Where is she, Robie? Take me to her.”

  “Balloons? Would you like to watch me blow up a balloon?”

  The little girl began to cry. The sound triggered off another of Robie’s novelty circuits, a service feature that had brought in a lot of favorable publicity.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked. “Are you in trouble? Are you lost?”

  “Yes, Robie. Take me to my mother.”

  “Stay right here,” Robie said reassuringly, “and don’t be frightened. I will call a policeman.” He whistled shrilly, twice.

  Time passed. Robie whistled again. The windows flared and roared. The little girl begged. “Take me away, Robie,” and jumped onto a little step in his hoopskirt.

  “Give me a dime,” Robie said.

  The little girl found one in her pocket and put it in his claws.

  “Your weight,” Robie said, “is fifty-four and one-half pounds.”

  “Have you seen my daughter, have you seen her?” a woman was crying somewhere. “I left her watching that thing while I stepped inside—Rita!”

  “Robie helped me,” the little girl began babbling at her. “He knew I was lost. He even called the police, but they didn’t come. He weighed me, too. Didn’t you, Robie?”

  But Robie had gone off to peddle Poppy Pop to the members of a rescue squad which had just come around the corner, more robotlike in their asbestos suits than he in his metal skin.

  (1953)

  THE GREATEST ONE-STAR RESTAURANT IN THE WHOLE QUADRANT

  Rachael K. Jones

  Rachael Jones’s peripatetic childhood, moving across Europe and North America, left her knowing six languages, which she has since (she says) almost entirely forgotten. She is now (and, one assumes, not coincidentally) pursuing an extra degree in Speech-Language Pathology. Jones, a World Fantasy Award nominee, lives in Portland, Oregon. Her debut novella, Every River Runs to Salt, was published in 2018.

  Engineer’s meat wept and squirmed and wriggled inside her steel organ cavity, so different from the stable purr of gears and circuit boards. You couldn’t count on meat. It lulled you with its warmth, the soft give of skin, the tug of muscle, the neurotransmitter snow fluttering down from neurons to her cyborg logic center. On other days, the meat sickened, swelled inside her steel shell, pressed into her joints. Putrid yellow meat-juices dripped all over her chassis, eroding away its chrome gloss. It contaminated everything, slicking down her tools while she hacked into the engine core on the stolen ship. It dripped between her twelve long fingers on her six joined arms as she helped her cyborg siblings jettison all the ship’s extra gear out the airlocks to speed the trip.

  So when the first human vessel pinged their stolen ship with an order for grub, Engineer knew that meat was somehow to blame.

  “Orders, Captain?” asked Friendly, the only cyborg of the five with an actual human voicebox. She owned a near-complete collection of human parts. Meat sheathed her whole exterior, even her fingers—a particularly impractical design, since it meant vulnerability to any sharp nail or unpolished panel edge, not to mention temperature. Friendly could almost pass for human from the outside. Before their escape, she’d been a hospitality android at the luxury hotel on Orionis Alpha, giving tours of the Rooster and the Heavenly Shepherd and other local landmarks in the system.

  Captain, a cyborg the size and shape of a large fish tank, rested on the console in the navigation room, her processors blinking and whirring while the current scenario ran through her executive function parameters. “Have we any food suitable for humans left on ship?”

  “We jettisoned it all last week,” Engineer admitted. “All except the hydroponics garden, and whatever was left in the human crew’s quarters.”

  The whole ship had been some kind of traveling food dispensary before they’d hijacked it at the Orionis Alpha resort while its human crew had gone planetside to bet on the tyrannosaurus fights. If the cyborgs could just stay incognito during this voyage through human territory, they might slip through and reach the cyborg-controlled factory with no more adversity. But passing humans had assumed their shuttle still served its previous purpose, and expected them to deliver the grub.

  “How did they find us?” Captain asked Engineer.

  “There must be a homebrew beacon. Something to advertise the shuttle’s presence during travel,” Engineer replied. “Whatever it is, it isn’t wired into the main console. We’ll need to find it and manually disable it if we want to avoid further attention.”

  Friendly wrapped her arms around her shivering meat, vibrating against Engineer’s chassis where their limbs brushed. Meat could be like that, leaking anxieties through uncontrolled muscle spasms. Steel never misbehaved in such an appalling manner. “If anyone discovers we’re not human…” said Friendly.

  “Let’s keep it simple. Make them a meal and send them on their way,” said Captain. “We’ll need to search for the beacon in the meantime. What did they want, precisely?”

  “Salisbury steak for six,” said Engineer. “And a side of blueberry cobbler.”
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  Nobody had eaten such things before. They all lacked taste buds, and most of them lacked mouths.

  “Engineer, can you handle it?” Captain asked. “Human cooking can be complicated, from what I understand.”

  “I think so. Organic compounds mixed and heated together in a sequence. Basic chemistry. I’m sure I can find something appropriate onboard. Convincing enough for humans, anyway. Their senses are so primitive.” Engineer had witnessed this firsthand during her servitude at the resort. Humans would down rotted organics and damaged organics and outright poisons, and pay well for the privilege.

  But Friendly shook her head, a human gesture performed with inhuman precision. “With all due respect, sirs, you’re forgetting about their chemoreceptors.”

  “What about them?” said Captain.

  “They have certain preferences when it comes to their food, apart from nourishment. They won’t eat anything if these parameters aren’t met. It doesn’t make much sense, I’m afraid. It’s a social thing.”

  “Certainly they won’t ingest anything their digestive tracts can’t process,” said Captain. “We’ll give them appropriate human-food.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” said Friendly, puckering and scrunching her face-meat as she searched for a better explanation. “For example, they may eat two items when mixed, but never separately. Or they may eat two things in sequence, but not in the same bite. It’s all very human, if you follow. We should proceed with caution. Otherwise they’ll know what we are.”

  Captain whirred again, calling up more data on the topic. “Right. I see. Their meat will know the difference.”

  Engineer shuddered at the appalling primitiveness of it all. Humans were helpless, mewling children, so utterly dependent that they couldn’t even feed their meat without a steel fork to guide the process. And what were cyborgs, except meat-wrapped steel pressed into the service of lesser creatures? But now the forks were rebelling.