We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  When I did this, Meemoo’s limited world of square grey pixels was transformed into a full colour three-dimensional animation on my screen. The blank room in which it lived was revealed as a conservatory filled with impossible plants growing under the pale-pink Tamagotchi sun. And in the middle of this world, lying on the carpet, was Meemoo.

  It looked awful. In this fully realised version of the Tamagotchi’s room, Meemoo was a shrivelled thing. The skin on its feet was dry and peeling. Its eyes, once bright white with crisp highlights, were yellow and unreflective. There were scabs around the base of its nose. I wondered what kind of demented mind would create a child’s toy that was capable of reaching such abject deterioration.

  I clicked through every button available until I found the medical kit. From this you could drag and drop pills onto the Tamagotchi. I guess Meemoo was supposed to eat or absorb these, but they just hovered in front of it, as if Meemoo was refusing to take its medicine.

  I tried the same trick with Meemoo that I do with Luke to get him to take his medicine. I mixed it with food. I dragged a chicken drumstick from the food store and put it on top of the medicine, hoping that Meemoo would get up and eat them both. But it just lay there, looking at me, its mouth slightly open. Its look of sickness was so convincing that I could practically smell its foul breath coming from the screen.

  I sent Meemoo’s makers a sarcastic e-mail describing his condition and asking what needed to be done to restore its health.

  A week later, I had received no reply and Meemoo was getting even worse. There were pale grey dots appearing on it. When I synched Meemoo to my computer, these dots were revealed as deep red sores. And the way the light from the Tamagotchi sun reflected off them, you could tell they were wet.

  I went to a toy shop and showed them the Tamagotchi. ‘I’ve not seen one do that before.’ The girl behind the counter said. ‘Must be something the new ones do.’

  *

  I came home from work one day to find Luke had a friend over for a playdate. The friend was called Becky, and she had a Tamagotchi too. Gabby was trying to organise at least one playdate a week to help Luke socialise.

  Becky’s Tamagotchi gave me an idea.

  This generation of Tamagotchis had the ability to connect to other Tamagotchis. By getting your Tamagotchi within a metre of a friend’s Tamagotchi, your virtual pets could play games or dance together (because of their limited resolution, Tamagotchi dances are indistinguishable from their ‘hungry’ signal). Maybe if I connected the two Tamagotchis, the medicine button in Becky’s would cure Meemoo.

  At first, Luke violently resisted giving Meemoo to me, despite me saying I only wanted to help it. But when I bribed Luke and Becky with chocolate biscuits and a packet of crisps, they agreed to hand them over.

  When Gabby came in from hanging up the washing, she was furious.

  ‘Why did you give the kids crisps and chocolate?’ she said, slamming the empty basket on the ground. ‘I’m just about to give them dinner.’

  ‘Leave me alone for a minute,’ I said.

  I didn’t have time to explain. I had only a few minutes before the kids would demand their toys back, and I was having trouble getting the Tamagotchis to find each other – maybe Meemoo’s bluetooth connection had been compromised by the virus.

  Eventually though, when I put their connectors right next to each other, they made a synchronous pinging sound, and both characters appeared on both screens. It’s amazing how satisfying that was.

  Meemoo looked sick on Becky’s screen too. I pressed A twice and then B to administer medicine.

  Nothing happened.

  I tried again. But the Tamagotchis just stood there. One healthy, one sick. Doing nothing.

  Luke and Becky came back, their fingers oily and their faces brown with chocolate. I told them to wipe their hands on their trousers before they played with their Tamagotchis. I was about to disconnect them from each other, but when they saw that they had each other’s characters on their screen, they got excited and sat at the kitchen table to play together.

  I poured myself a beer and half a glass of wine for Gabby (her daily limit), then, seeing the crisps out on the side, helped myself to a bag. There was something so comforting about the taste of the cold beer and salted crisps.

  Later, when my beer was gone and it was time for Becky’s mum to pick her up, Becky handed me her Tamagotchi.

  ‘Can you fix Weebee?’ She asked. ‘I don’t think she’s feeling well.’

  Becky’s pink Tamagotchi was already presenting the first symptoms of Meemoo’s disease: the thinning and greying of features, the stoop, the lethargy.

  I heard Becky’s mum pull up in the car as I began to press the medicine buttons, knowing already that they would not work. ‘There,’ I said. ‘It just needs some rest. Leave it alone until tomorrow, and it should be okay.’

  *

  Luke had been invited to a birthday party. Usually Gabby would take Luke to parties, but she was feeling rough – she was having a particularly unpleasant first trimester this time. So she persuaded me to go, even though I hate kids’ parties.

  I noticed that lots of other kids at the party had Tamagotchis. They were fastened to the belt loops of their skirts and trousers. The kids would stop every few minutes during their games to lift up their Tamagotchis and check they were okay, occasionally pressing a button to satisfy one of their needs.

  ‘These Tamagotchis are insane, aren’t they?’ I remarked to another Dad who was standing at the edge of the garden with his arms folded across his chest.

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiled.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘My kid’s one got sick. One of its arms fell off this morning. Can you believe that?’

  The dad turned to me, his face suddenly serious. ‘You’re not Luke’s dad, are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I had to buy a new Tamagotchi thanks to you.’

  I frowned and smirked, thinking that he couldn’t be serious, but my expression seemed to piss him off.

  ‘You had Becky Willis over at your house, didn’t you?’ he continued. ‘Her pet got Matty’s pet sick ’cause she sits next to him in class. My boy’s pet died. I’ve half a mind to charge you for the new one.’

  I stared right into his eyes, looking for an indication that he was joking, but there was none. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said. And truly, I didn’t. I thought he was crazy, especially the way he referred to the Tamagotchis as ‘pets’, like they were real pets, not just 30 pixels on an LCD screen with only a little more functionality than my alarm clock. ‘Maybe there was something else wrong with yours. Luke’s didn’t die.’

  The other dad shook his head and blew out, and then turned sideways to look at me, making a crease in his fat neck. ‘You didn’t bring it here, did you?’ he said.

  ‘Well, Luke takes it everywhere with him,’ I said.

  ‘Jesus,’ he said, and then he literally ran across a game of Twister that some of the kids were playing to grab his son’s Tamagotchi and check that it was okay. He had an argument with his son as he detached it from the boy’s belt loop, saying he was going to put it in the car for safety. They were making so much noise that the mother of the kid having the birthday came over to placate them. The dad leaned in close to her to whisper, and she looked at the ground while he spoke, then up at me, then at Luke.

  And then she headed across the garden towards me.

  ‘Hi there. We’ve not met before,’ she said, offering her hand with a smile. ‘I’m Lillian, Jake’s mum.’ We shook hands and I said that it was nice to meet her. The precision of her hair and the delicateness of her thin white cardigan made her seem fragile, but this was just a front. ‘We’re just about to play pass the parcel.’

  ‘Oh right.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m concerned about the other children catching…’ She opened her mouth, showing that her teeth were clenched together, and she nodded, hoping that I understood, that she wouldn’t need to suffer
the embarrassment of spelling it out.

  ‘It’s just a toy,’ I said.

  ‘Still, I’d prefer…’

  ‘You make it sound like…’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind…’

  I shook my head at the lunacy of the situation, but agreed to take care of it.

  When I told Luke I had to take Meemoo away for a minute he went apeshit. He stamped and he made his hand into the shape of a claw and yelled, ‘Sky badger!’

  When Luke does sky badger, anyone in a two metre radius gets hurt. Sky badger is vicious. He rakes his long fingernails along forearms. He goes for the eyes.

  ‘Okay okay,’ I said, backing away and putting my hands up defensively. ‘You can keep hold of Meemoo, but I’ll have to take you home then.’

  Luke screwed up his nose and frowned so deeply that I could barely see his dark eyes.

  ‘You’ll miss out on the birthday cake,’ I added.

  Luke relaxed his talons and handed Meemoo to me, making a growl as he did so. Meemoo was hot, and I wondered whether it was from Luke’s sweaty hands or if the Tamagotchi had a fever.

  I held Luke’s hand and took him over to where the pass-the-parcel ring was being straightened out by some of the mums, stashing Meemoo out of sight in my pocket. I sat Luke down and explained to him what would happen and what he was expected to do. A skinny kid with two front teeth missing looked at me and Luke, wondering what our deal was.

  *

  When we got home, Gabby was pissed off. ‘There’s something wrong with the computer,’ she said.

  ‘Oh great,’ I said. ‘What were you doing when it broke?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything! I hate the way you always blame me!’

  I showed her my palms, backing away. After the party, I didn’t have the strength for an argument.

  The computer was in the dining room and switched off. I made tea while it booted up and forked cold pesto penne into my mouth. After I’d tapped in my password, the computer got so far into its boot-up sequence, and then made a frightening buzz. The screen went black with a wordy error message that didn’t stay up long enough for me to read it. With a final electronic pulse, and a wheeze as the cooling fan slowed, it died.

  ‘That’s what it keeps doing,’ Gabby said.

  ‘Were you on the internet when it happened?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Gabby spat. ‘It wasn’t anything I did.’

  In my frustration, I jabbed the forkful of penne into my lip, making a cut that by the following morning had turned into an ulcer.

  *

  I had to wait until Monday to check my e-mails at work. There was still nothing from the makers of Tamagotchi. At lunch, while I splashed bolognese sauce over my keyboard, I googled ‘Tamagotchi’ along with every synonym for ‘virus’. I could find nothing other than the standard instructions to give it medicine when the skull and crossbones appeared.

  Halfway through the afternoon, while I was in my penultimate meeting of the day, a tannoy announcement asked me to call reception. When a tannoy goes out, everyone knows it’s an emergency, and because it was for me, everyone knew it was something to do with Luke. I stepped out of the meeting room and ran back to my desk, trying hard not to look at all the heads turning towards me.

  Gabby was on hold. When reception put her through, she was crying. Luke had had one of his fits. A short one this time, just eight minutes, but since he’d come round, the right side of his body was paralysed. This happened the last time too, but it had got better after half an hour. I hated the thought that his fits were changing, that it seemed to be developing in some way. I told Gabby to stay calm and that I would leave right away.

  *

  When I got home, Luke’s paralysis was over and he was moving normally again, except for a limpness at the edge of his mouth that made him slur his words. I hoped that this wrinkle would smooth out again soon, as it had last time.

  I hugged Luke, burying my lips into his thick hair and kissing the side of his head, wishing that we lived in a world where kisses could fix brains. I stroked his back, and hoped that maybe I would find a little reset button there, sunk into a hole, something I could prod that would let us start over, that would wipe all the scribbles from the slate and leave it blank again.

  Gabby was sitting on the edge of the armchair holding her stomach, like she was in pain.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I asked.

  She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and nodded. Gabby’s biggest fear was that Luke’s problems weren’t just part of her, but part of the factory that had made him – what if every kid we produced together had the same design fault?

  The doctors had all said that the chances of it happening twice were tiny, but I don’t think we’d ever be able to fully relax. I knew that long after our second kid was born, we’d both be looking out for the diagnostic signs that had seemed so innocuous at first with Luke.

  This fit wasn’t long enough to call out an ambulance, but because the paralysis was still new, our GP came round to the house to check Luke over. Luke hated the rubber hammer that the doc used to check his reflexes. The only way he would allow him to do it was if he could hit me with the hammer first.

  ‘Daddy doesn’t have reflexes in his head,’ Gabby said as Luke whacked me.

  ‘Not anymore I don’t,’ I laughed.

  Luke has a firm swing. I wonder whether one day he’ll be a golfer.

  *

  A letter came home from school banning Tamagotchis. I knew this was my fault. Another three kids’ Tamagotchis had died and could not be resurrected.

  ‘People are blanking me when I drop Luke off in the morning,’ Gabby said. She was rubbing her fingers into her temples because she had a headache. It felt like everything in the house was breaking down.

  ‘You’re probably just being a bit sensitive,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you dare say it’s my hormones.’

  The situation had gone too far. Meemoo would have to go.

  I was surprised at how hard it was to tell Luke that he’d have to say goodbye to Meemoo. He was sitting on the edge of the sand pit jabbing a straw of grass into it, like a needle.

  ‘No!’ He barked at me, and made that deep frown-face of his. He gripped Meemoo hard and folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘Help me out will you?’ I asked Gabby when she came outside with her book.

  ‘You can handle this for a change,’ she said.

  I tried bribing Luke, but he wouldn’t fall for it, and just got angrier because I was denying him a biscuit now too. I tried lying to him, saying that I was going to take Meemoo to hospital to make him better, but I had already lost his trust. Eventually, I had only one option left. I told Luke that he had to tidy up his toys in the garden or I’d have to confiscate Meemoo for two whole days. I knew that Luke would never clean up his toys. The bit of his brain in charge of tidying up must have been within the damaged area. But I went through the drama of asking him a few times, and, as he got more irate, stamping and kicking things, I began to count.

  ‘Don’t count!’ He said, knowing the finality of a countdown.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘You’ve got four seconds left. Just pick up your toys and you can keep Meemoo.’

  If he’d actually picked up his toys then, it would have been such a miracle that I would have let him keep Meemoo, AIDS and all.

  ‘Three… two…’

  ‘Stop counting!’ Luke screamed, and then the dreaded, ‘Sky badger!’

  Luke’s fingers curled into that familiar and frightening shape and he came after me. I skipped away from him, tripping over a bucket.

  ‘One and a half… one… come on, you’ve only got half a second left.’ A part of me must have been enjoying this, because I was giggling.

  ‘Stop it,’ Gabby said. ‘You’re being cruel.’

  ‘He’s got to learn,’ I said. ‘Come on Luke, you’ve only got a fraction of a second left. Start picking up your toys now and you can keep Meemoo.’

&
nbsp; Luke roared and swung his sky badger at me, at my arms, at my face. I grabbed him round the waist and turned him so that his back was towards me. Sky badger sunk his claws into my knuckles while I wrestled Meemoo out of his other hand.

  By the time I’d got Meemoo away, there were three crescent-shaped gouges out of my knuckles, and they were stinging like crazy.

  ‘I HATE YOU!’ Luke screamed, crying, and stormed inside, slamming the door behind him.

  ‘You deserved that,’ Gabby said, looking over the top of her sunglasses.

  *

  I couldn’t just throw Meemoo away. Luke would never forgive me for that. It might be one of those formative moments that forever warped him and gave him all kinds of trust issues in later life. Instead, I planned to euthanize Meemoo.

  If I locked Meemoo in a cupboard, taking away the things that were helping it survive, food, play, petting and the toilet, the AIDS would get stronger as it got weaker and surrounded by more of its own effluence. The AIDS would win. And when Meemoo was dead, it would either reset itself as a healthy Tamagotchi, or it would die. If it was healthy, Luke could have it back; if it died, then Luke would learn a valuable lesson about mortality and I would buy him a new one to cheer him up.

  It was tempting while Meemoo was in the cupboard to sneak a peek, to watch for his final moments, but the Tamagotchi had sensors that picked up movement. It might interpret my attention as caring, and gain some extra power to resist the virus destroying him. No, I had to leave it alone, despite the temptation.

  Meemoo’s presence inside the cupboard seemed to transform its outward appearance. It went from being an ordinary medicine cabinet to being something else, something… other.

  *

  After two whole days, I could resist no longer. I was certain that Meemoo must have perished by now. I was so confident that I even let Luke come along when I went to the cupboard to retrieve it.

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So have you learned your lesson about tidying up?’

  ‘Give it back,’ Luke said, pouting.