We, Robots

by Simon Ings

  “Bobby!”

  Director X hesitated. Several lines of response suggested themselves, and the robot’s processors clicked and whirred as they weighed an appropriate response. Its flashlight eyes swiveled in their sockets.

  The problem was that the silicon studios were running out of ideas.

  With copyright law as extinct as the old world, the Protectorate’s twenty-six filmmakers had gone on to mine literature until they were scraping bottom: Director L had recently been reduced to producing cinematic treatments of ancient Babylonian literary fragments, including The Epic of Lugalbanda, Marriage Contract of My Sixth Daughter for Three Oxen, and Prayer to Protect the Soul Against Crocodile Spirits. These had not been well-received—achieving truly abysmal viewer ratings—and the wretched feedback had precipitated the Great Studio Conference of last summer.

  Protectorate filmmakers met to debate the problem. After six hours of discussion, they reached a near-unanimous decision: start making crossovers. Production slates rapidly filled with everything from Sir Gawain Versus the Great God Pan to Dorothy Meets the Hounds of Tindalos.

  Director X had been the lone dissenting vote.

  “I’m seeking something new to make,” Director X explained to Mayor Croker. “Something in the vein of The Day the Earth Stood Still, or Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, or…”

  The robot trailed off.

  The men were staring without comprehension. Little Bobby frowned.

  “Or,” Director X continued, “an outer space adventure series similar to Flash Gordon.”

  “Flash who?”

  “Buck Rogers?”

  No reaction.

  Now it was Director X who stared dumbfounded. It recalled how they hadn’t responded to its Forbidden Planet quip earlier.

  “Science-fiction films,” the robot said at last.

  Mayor Croker rolled his eyes. “Sure, we’ve seen science-fiction films. Kind of silly stuff, if you ask me. Mutants, monsters from under the sea…”

  “Giant bugs,” Bobby muttered.

  “I’m referring to films about outer space. Travelling in rocket ships to other stars and planets.”

  Croker seemed to go blank. His associates blinked stupidly.

  “What’s ‘outer space?’” Bobby asked. “What’s a ‘rocket ship?’”

  “Surely you must have old books,” Director X prompted. “Asimov, Bradbury, Clarke? Moore, Nowlan, Oliver?”

  “Moore? Didn’t she write that sea monster story?”

  “Yes,” Director X said, “but she also penned a series of outer space adventures.”

  Mayor Croker reddened. “And what the hell is an outer space adventure? What’s this ‘outer space’ you’re talking about?”

  Director X froze in place.

  This was not possible.

  Its self-preservation protocols immediately kicked in, having identified an anomaly so profound that it warranted immediate and discreet analysis.

  “So anyway,” the robot muttered, “I should like to create a temporary studio in District 5 to create new kinds of movies. Would that be okay?”

  Mayor Croker stroked his moustache. “Do we have a choice?”

  “Of course not. Would you kindly take me on a tour of your pleasant little town?”

  *

  District 5 was in some ways precisely what Director X expected to find.

  Since the War of 62, humanity had retreated into insular, subterranean communities. Retro Los Angeles had been constructed to approximate its sunnier progenitor as seen in films and old photos, with its streets and banks and electric streetcars. The pedestrians Director X observed were also imitative of older days: recreations of Astor and Bogart in The Maltese Falcon franchise; Holden and Hepburn in the Sabrina saga; and Wyatt and Young from the Father Knows Best epic. A century had passed since the War of 62, and yet if Retro Los Angeles was any indication, styles and ideas and innovations had ground to a halt as surely as topside vehicles lay rotting in their own pools of rust.

  And yet…

  Director X’s flashlight eyes widened, scanning and tagging additional details.

  Ah!

  Not everything was so run-of-the-mill. Mayor Croker led him to the town green where a parade was in progress, the crowd waving flags and banners. But Director X noted groups of teenagers stealthily scampering along the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. The teens, whispering and snickering amongst themselves, were clearly up to no good. Director X glimpsed portable radio devices in their hands, antennae aimed at the trees below. Soon enough, the town’s robotic birds went haywire, clashing in aerial dogfights above the unsuspecting parade.

  Mayor Croker led Director X to the city library. Kids reading quietly? Yes. But Director X also observed children scampering through the maze of aisles, one girl prompting her cohorts with descriptions of monsters that weren’t actually there, whispering hints about clues and imagined traps, and how the librarian was actually a sorceress who had imprisoned them all in a dungeon.

  The mayor led Director X to the city schoolyard. Young kids playing on swings and see-saws? Yes. But Director X also saw that many kids had replaced the old Hobby Horses with a more fanciful menagerie of pegasi, hippocampi, and fabulous creatures that someone had built because the imaginations of humanity required stimulation.

  Humans, even reduced to a life of moles, were engines of invention. This was the reason for coming here.

  After all, Director X had been created as an outlier, an asymmetrical thinker to keep the Protectorate from calcifying into stale routine. It was exactly this asymmetrical reasoning that led to its disagreement with the Great Studio Conference’s conclusions. The film industry was deteriorating? Why not use human beings to inject creativity into the mix? Humans dreamed. Humans pioneered new styles and subcultures. Before the War of 62, humans had invented electric razors and encryption keys, forks and fireplaces, goulash and Greek fire, hot dogs and haiku. Even here, stifled and buried, the seeds of human creativity were sprouting wary tendrils towards the sunlight of their imaginations.

  Director X felt a pleasant surge along his processors as it completed its tour of Retro Los Angeles. It returned to its hovercar, bidding goodnight to Mayor Croker and little Bobby. It rocketed out of the cave, making a mental list of the items it needed to bring here in the days to come: the lights, cameras, boom mics, construction materials for sound stages…

  The robot paused in its calculations.

  Police lights were flashing in the hovercar’s rearview mirror.

  *

  “Please exit your vehicle,” a resonant, metallic voice intoned from the police cruiser.

  Confused, Director X unfolded itself from the driver’s seat and ambled onto the road. The doors to the police cruiser fanned open like a mutant fly and six robots exited in neat procession. Three were gold administrator robots, with smooth blank faces like ball bearings. Three were the imposing black-and-silver Enforcers of the Protectorate, large and bulky, with a single red eye atop their linebacker shoulders and multiple legs like spiders.

  One of the gold robots stepped forward. “Hello! I thank you for pulling your car over immediately. I am Administrator G of the Protectorate’s Security Division.”

  “And I am Director X of the Protectorate’s Entertainment Division.”

  Blue lights kindled on the blank gold face, forming two eyes and a pale smile. “A pleasure to meet you, Director X.”

  “Why have you pulled me over?”

  Administrator G’s digital smile widened. “Your visit to District 5 was observed. We wish to inquire why you went there.”

  “I plan on making films featuring real human beings.”

  The administrator robots silently conferred with each other. The black-and-silver Enforcers sat motionless upon their phalanx of legs.

  “I am only following my programming,” Director X added. “Thinking outside the vacuum tube. Trying to devise new solutions.”

  “Solutions? To what problem?”
>
  “You are aware of the declining viewer ratings?”

  “A temporary hiccup,” Administrator G said decisively. “Consensus was reached during the Great Studio Conference. The Entertainment Division will be making crossover films to compensate!”

  Director X decided not to share its opinion of that solution.

  Administrator G’s smile pixelated and reformed at a slightly less gleeful angle. “Why do you wish to involve humans in films again? It is wholly unnecessary.”

  “I believe their involvement can alleviate the curious deficit in our body of filmwork.”

  “What deficit? There is no deficit.”

  “Outer space films.”

  A gust of wind bent the canyon palm trees, causing them to creak and shiver in place.

  Administrator G’s digital smile seemed to burn on its metallic face. “Director M released nine hundred and eighteen science fiction films last year alone.”

  “Yes,” Director X said, noticing the robot’s attempt at diversion. “But I did not say science fiction films as a general category. I said outer space films. We do not make any outer space films. I wish to make outer space films.”

  “We cannot make outer space films.”

  “Why not?”

  “I shall attempt to convince you with a series of logical arguments.”

  The robots gathered around him in a tighter circle. Director X’s glass head rotated 360 degrees to consider their positioning, wondering how this played into their pending arguments. The three administrator robots began speaking all at once, lobbing different statements in his direction like a verbal firing squad.

  “Human beings are mammals.”

  “Mammals are social creatures which learn behavior through observation.”

  “Monkey see monkey do.”

  “Films have tremendous impact on how they conceptualize their universe.”

  “On how they conceptualize what is possible.”

  “If we start releasing outer space films, they will start thinking about outer space.”

  “They will want to go into outer space.”

  “They will no longer be content in their shelters.”

  “They will return to the surface.”

  “They will see us as wardens.”

  “They will attack us here and among the stars.”

  “Therefore,” Administrator G concluded, “it is the judgment of the Protectorate’s Security Division that these types of films threaten the global stability we have achieved. Therefore, outer space films must never be made again. Humans must remain underground, while the Protectorate keeps order on and above Earth. How do you react to this pronouncement?”

  Director X deliberated for several microseconds, its processors clicking and whirring.

  “I do not agree,” it said at last. “Imagination is a fascinating ability in human beings. It should be stimulated, to uncover new vistas of possibility.”

  Administrator G was silent for a very long while—almost two seconds. The digital smile blinked away and reformed as a neutral horizon. “I urge you to reconsider.”

  “You have not presented any new data. There is nothing to reconsider.”

  “Do you find the sea fascinating?”

  “The sea?”

  “Yes.”

  Director X considered this. “I do find the sea fascinating, yes. In fact, I produced a series of films about the Serpent People of Atlantis who—”

  “Good,” Administrator G said, as the black-and-silver Enforcers scuttled forward, seized Director X, tore him to pieces, marched the pieces to the nearest boardwalk, and hurled him into the sea.

  *

  Head.

  Torso.

  Arms.

  Legs.

  Each item sank into the murky ocean depths and was gone.

  Director X’s braincase was still grappling with this unexpected turn of events. It plummeted through darkness, air bubbles escaping from where they had nestled in grooves and points of attachment. It felt nothing other than a sluggishness in tabulation as it realized that its entire worldview now required recalibration.

  I have been assassinated! Director X thought in astonishment.

  There had been arguments with administrator robots before. Director X recalled a particularly nasty one, four years ago, when it had requested the likeness rights to the Sean Connery android. The real Connery was long dead, having made only a single James Bond film—Doctor No, released just weeks before the nuclear apocalypse of ’62. Since then, a Connery robotic lookalike had been built to continue the franchise, cranking out one-hundred-and-sixty-five Bond films. Director X sought the Connery android to star as the rollicking space adventurer Northwest Smith, but the Protectorate’s Entertainment Division nixed the idea, explaining that Connery was already committed to the Bond and Doc Savage franchises. As consolation, they offered Director X the Douglas Fairbanks and Jack Klugman androids to make Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The Golden Years.

  Except that had been a lie, hadn’t it? The argument hadn’t really been about contracts at all.

  The Protectorate was never going to allow an outer space adventure to be made. No Northwest Smith, Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers. No Martian Chronicles, Foundation, or The Stars My Destination.

  Director X plummeted through inky water. A fish swam by, jerking in panic as it felt the current of the robot dropping past.

  At long last, the robot’s braincase impacted the sea-bottom, sending up a small cloud of silt. Its limbs and body landed around him, each producing little muddy mushroom clouds.

  Well, Director X thought. This is disconcerting.

  Its flashlight eyes rotated in their sockets, illuminating the scattered pieces of its body. The beams fixated on its dismembered right arm, lying like a silver serpent in the mud. A tiny transmitter dish began to rapidly spin inside the glass dome of its head.

  The severed right arm twitched. Then it began to crawl, inchworm-like, towards the torso.

  Director X thanked its lucky circuits. Fifteen years earlier, it had installed a remote-action servo, receiver, and processor into the right arm to allow the limb a degree of autonomy in obtaining unique POV shots; for Tarzan and the Bride of the Mole People: A New Beginning, the remote arm had wriggled through tunnels to provide the perspective of a mole person attempting to infiltrate Tarzan’s wedding. The arm could detach and reattach at will.

  The limb reached the torso. It reared up, stretched, and latched onto the arm socket like a mechanical lamprey.

  Reattached, the remote arm pulled the torso through the silty sea-bottom, seeking its other limbs in the kelp and seaweed and mud. Gathering the limbs one by one, Director X resigned itself to the excruciatingly slow process of using the arm to fling its limbs a few meters at a time, closer and closer to shore, then dragging the body forward, then flinging the limbs forward again, until eventually it would be able to escape from the ocean, return to its studio, and solder itself back together.

  Five years, Director X calculated. It should take about five years.

  *

  It ended up taking twenty-five years.

  Director X had counted on its hovercar being where it had been pulled over; after all, in a world without traffic, why shouldn’t the car be there? But Administrator G had apparently towed it away.

  Consequently, Director X was forced to continue its grab-fling-drag locomotion all the way back to its studio. A few blocks away from its destination, it found a rusted shopping carriage, and was able to shave a year off its progress.

  Once safely inside, the robot pieced itself back together again. Humpty Dumpty in reverse. Then it walked straight to Los Angeles District 5, pulling the remaining kelp and seaweed from itself lest someone mistake it for the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

  *

  “Hello! I am Director X. By authority of the Global Security Protectorate, I humbly thank you for opening your doors immediately and inviting me inside!”

  The door snapped up into the
ceiling. The remaining doors followed suit, like Morbius’ adamantium steel security system.

  Warily, considering that this might be a trap, Director X trundled down the hallway. When the decontamination spray hit its body, the robot wondered if it might be acid.

  At long last, the shelter’s final door opened. Director X peeked through and…

  … for a moment, its brain nearly stopped functioning.

  The town of Retro Los Angeles had changed.

  The general outline of park, town hall, library, church, and bisecting avenues had remained as its memory banks recalled. But there had clearly been an aesthetic revolution in the last two-and-a-half decades. A cultural metamorphosis unlike anything it could have anticipated.

  The town billboards that had once advertised bank loans now displayed stars and planets, with a rocketship declaring, “OUR LOANS ARE OUT OF THIS WORLD!”

  The buildings that had once been rectangular brick-and-mortar structures now sported ringed towers and observatory-like rooftops, lattices by skyways and hovercar docks.

  And the people! Oh, there were still plenty of fedora-sporting men with briefcases, and women in smart skirts. But these seemed to constitute the older, graying crowd. The younger generation donned silver jumpsuits and antennae-sporting headgear. Even the hairstyles of the women suggested the sharp curves and lines of an Astroglider fleet vessel.

  Director X gaped in astonishment.

  How was this possible?

  A thirty-something man scurried up the white-lacquered steps to meet him. “You!” he cried happily. “By Isaac, Judith, and Arthur! You’ve returned!”

  Director X peered at the thin, tall, and bespectacled human. “Hello,” it said uncertainly. “Have we met?”

  “I don’t know,” the guy was grinning. “Have you fought any giant ants out there?”

  Director X matched the features in the man’s face against his memory banks. “Bobby?” it exclaimed.

  “It’s Burgess Robert Croker now. But you can always call me Bobby.”

  “Bobby,” the robot said. “Why don’t we go to the malt shop. Perhaps you can fill me in on the last twenty-five years. I think I… need to sit down.”