Ives looked at the apartment’s dramatic curves and angles, its steps, eccentrically placed and of varying heights, leading to an upper level of fanciful shape. The apartment was pleasing but cold, impersonal in its fashionable eccentricity. Ives liked it. He signed a lease that afternoon.
In this apartment that Dustin Hoffman had once sublet, between work and phone calls to his lawyer, Ives waited for Manhattan’s famous magic to begin.
New York, as usual, was long on promises and short on deliveries. The famous magic must have been lost in transit; it never seemed to reach Ives. Months later, on an otherwise perfect summer evening, Ives realized that nothing great was ever going to happen to him. Maybe not even anything good. His life was a bore, and his apartment was an ever-growing mess despite the perfunctory efforts of a succession of short-tempered cleaning ladies.
Then the doorbell rang.
No matter how bad things are in New York there’s always the possibility that one day the doorbell will ring and something strange and wonderful will come in. Usually it’s just a mugger or a process server. But sometimes . . .
Ives opened the door. A small, middle-aged man stood outside, dressed in a well-worn brown suit and carrying a shiny black suitcase.
“I’m Bardsley,” he said, “representing the Robotgnomics Corporation. If I could have a moment of your time—”
“I’m not interested,” Ives said. He started to close the door, but Bardsley was blocking it with the edge of his suitcase.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ives said.
“I may be persistent,” Bardsley said, “but I am not ridiculous. I am introducing a new line of household robots. And I smell something burning.”
Ives smelled it too, and dodged around the stacks of old Sunday Timeses to get to the kitchen. His Mexican sausages had turned into a charred black mess, the English muffins had burned in the toaster oven, and the ranchero sauce was annealed to the sides of the saucepan. Ives had never really grasped food’s inability to take care of itself. So much for another adventure in creative cookery.
As he switched on the exhaust fan, he became aware that Bardsley had followed him into the apartment. Ives turned, enraged, but the little man said, “I know, you’re not interested. But this was my fault. Let me clean up the mess.”
Bardsley opened his shiny black suitcase. What he took from it looked like an expensive toy, one of those cunning dolls that children like so much, perhaps because the dolls lack any resemblance to humans. It was a hemisphere of chromed metal about the size of half a cantaloupe.
From its underside there depended two flat feet with prehensile plastic toes and rubber sucker disks. On its rounded carapace were two slender antennae, each with an eye at its end. Behind the antennae were coiled metal arms terminating in a variety of small instruments.
Bardsley touched a switch at its base. The little robot’s antennae twitched, and it ran up the side of the stove. First it went at the skillet, scraping out the blackened sausages with a squirt of detergent from an internal reservoir. Then it dissolved the ranchero sauce and disposed of the charred sausages. When it finished, Bardsley turned it off and returned it to his suitcase.
Ives gave this performance the minute of respectful silence it deserved. At last he said, “Okay, I admit it, it’s incredible. What do you get for a gadget like this?”
“The Kitchen King, as we call it,” Bardsley said, “is free.”
“What’s the catch?” Ives asked.
“There is none. You will not pay one cent for the use of this miracle of humanistic engineering.”
Bardsley explained that the Robotgnomics Corporation had been set up to exploit some recent breakthroughs in home-service technology. As a promotion, the company was placing machines in certain households throughout the country. Those selected could use the robots for an indefinite period, free of charge. The company would retain ownership of the machines and could use favorable comments in its upcoming advertising campaign.
“Let me see that gadget again,” Ives said.
Bardsley took out the Kitchen King. Ives studied it intently, a man caught between paradigms. On the one hand, he knew that nothing is free, everything’s got a catch, and caveat emptor is a fundamental law of the universe. But it is also true that fortune favors the bold, opportunity knocks but once, and he who hesitates is condemned to go on living like a slob.
“Think it over,” Bardsley said. “I’ll come around next week.”
“Never mind,” Ives said. “I want it.”
Bardsley produced a short typed agreement that Ives read and signed. Bardsley put the paper away and touched the switch on the Kitchen King’s base. Antennae twitching, the Kitchen King climbed to the sink and attacked the pile of dirty dishes that had been accumulating all week in hopes of a miracle. It washed, rinsed, and dried them, and stacked them away in the pantry. After scrubbing the sink until it glistened, the Kitchen King stowed itself in a closet to await further tasks.
“It’s only fair to tell you,” Bardsley said, “the King doesn’t do floors or windows or anything like that. Just kitchen work.”
Ives didn’t care. He was experiencing something like an epiphany.
When Bardsley came by a few days later, he found Ives delighted with his household robot. He had only one complaint.
“It works perfectly,” Ives said, “but only in the kitchen. I know you told me about that. But look: Say I eat in the living room. When I’m done, I have to load everything onto a tray and bring it back to the kitchen myself. If the King will take stuff off the dinette, why not off the coffee table or nightstand?”
“Well, it may seem arbitrary to you,” Bardsley said. “But in fact, appropriate limits are fundamental to a humanistic philosophy of design.”
“Come again?” Ives said.
“We could program the Kitchen King to mow lawns, drive cars, walk dogs, tutor you in Swahili, figure your taxes. The possibilities are endless. But where do we stop? Carried to its logical conclusion, multipurpose robots could rival and even replace man himself. And that is wrong.”
“Well, okay,” Ives said. “But would it really violate your principles if my Kitchen King came out once in a while and emptied the ashtray?”
“I’m afraid it would,” Bardsley said. “But since you’ve been so cooperative, the company is prepared to lease you another of our household robots on the same terms as before.” He opened his shiny black suitcase.
Rudy Valet, the new machine, was a rectangular metal box with a gray crackle finish, three feet long by a foot wide by three inches deep. It walked horizontally or vertically on two, three, or four spidery arm/legs. Rudy sorted and folded laundry, hung up clothes, made beds, and set out clean towels. Rudy also emptied ashtrays and brought plates, cups, and glasses from around the apartment to the domain of the Kitchen King.
That helped. But clean ashtrays can seem a little silly when there’s a permanent black ring in your bathtub and a year’s supply of dust on the Venetian blinds. Bardsley sympathized. A few days later he brought Tilly the Toiler, an aluminum machine resembling a large, segmented worm. Tilly did floors, carpets, windows, blinds, curtains, bathtubs, sinks, and toilets. As a bonus, Bardsley also brought Lucy the Laundress, an ambulatory gray cube three feet to a side that, while Ives was out, crept around the apartment sniffing out dirty clothes, then plugging into the water system to do the wash. Lucy could also handle dry cleaning and was great with delicate fabrics.
The next addition to Ives’s household was Shorty the Short-Order Cook, who resembled a medium-size plastic octopus. Shorty’s vinyl tentacles, studded with thermal sensors and terminating in taste probes, turned out a limited but satisfying menu of fried egg sandwiches, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, chili, and tacos.
Shorty was soon followed by Billy Bartender, a tripodal peripatetic refrigerator with a Mixmaster head and high-speed ice-making capacity. Billy had an encyclopedic knowledge of drink combinations and specialized in martinis.
This pretty well took care
of Ives’s creature comforts. Next Bardsley introduced him to “Emotional Engineering for Better Living,” a hot new development that Robotgnomics was getting into. The basic unit was Magda the Mood Maker.
Magda looked like a group of expensive audio components arranged on a smart, white metal cabinet and equipped with eight small feet. She was covered with dials and lights and liquid-crystal displays. She looked cute as she waddled across Ives’s beige carpeting and plugged into an electrical outlet. Magda took charge of music, lighting, and ambient sound. Within days she had acquired the necessary data on Ives’s emotional cycles and was able to create an ever-changing program of sounds especially for him. Some mornings Ives awakened to the dolorous, cries of seabirds; other times it would be the crash of surf, the distant barking of mating seals, or the steady patter of canned rain. For musical backgrounds, Magda orchestrated his favorite selections in accord with his mood and adjusted the lights accordingly. The effect was dramatic. Ives’s slightest move or gesture seemed to take on a heightened significance. It was like being the star of his own movie.
For the first time in his life, Ives was happy. When he came home from work, his apartment was waiting for him, its lighting subdued, its mood inviting. His dinner was always ready when he wanted it. Sometimes it was one of Shorty’s snacks: other times, it would be an elaborate feast prepared by Robotgnomics’ latest addition to his household, François the French Chef. After dinner, drinks would appear beside him as though by magic, as Magda tuned in his favorite TV shows or selected a feature film from the cassette library. Mood music would accompany him as he moved around the apartment, and would lull him to sleep at night.
So satisfying were his evenings that Ives began to spend all his free time at home.
Why, surrounded by perfection, should he subject himself to New York’s dirty, crime-haunted streets? Robotgnomics had orchestrated him into the perfect urban recluse, self-sufficient and self-satisfied. Women and friends didn’t seem to matter much anymore. His apartment was magic, and you can’t do better than that.
Marissa, now his ex-wife, came by one afternoon to discuss the disposal of some books and papers he had left behind. Ives had François concoct an elaborate French dinner. Billy Bartender produced the proper wines, precisely chilled, and Magda created a light-and-sound show of utmost artfulness and beauty. At the meal’s end, Rudy Valet served a rare old Armagnac.
Marissa sipped her drink and said, at last, “Edmond, it’s all quite perfect, I suppose.”
Ives sensed her hesitation. “But?”
“Well, I was wondering where you are in all this.”
Ives hadn’t expected that. He laughed, a little uncertainly. “But all of this is me.”
Marissa considered for a moment. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“Is there anything wrong with that?”
“Not if you like it, I guess,” Marissa said.
Ives didn’t understand her attitude, and she didn’t elaborate. He thought about it for a while after she had left, and decided it was nothing but jealousy. What could possibly be wrong with his life?
He went upstairs to the bedroom. He undressed, dropping his clothes on the floor, knowing that Rudy Valet would be along presently to pick them up. He fell asleep on Lucy the Laundress’s warm, fresh sheets.
Ives woke up abruptly some hours later. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was four-twenty in the morning. Marissa must have upset him more than he’d thought, because he was wide awake, alert, and apprehensive. He lay in bed, watching the programmed shadows move slowly across the ceiling, listening to the silence tape. After a while he heard sounds of faint laughter coming from-somewhere within the apartment.
He got out of bed, slipped on a robe, and tiptoed downstairs into the darkened living room. He heard a whisper of voices from the kitchen. He went to the door and looked in.
The Kitchen King, Rudy Valet, Billy Bartender, and Tilly the Toiler were sitting in a circle on the floor. Lucy the Laundress shared one side of the dinette with Shorty the Short-Order Cook. Frangois the French Chef was perched on top of Magda, who occupied the dinette’s other side. Sitting on the stove were two robots whom Ives couldn’t remember having seen before.
“What’s going on?” Ives asked.
“It’s him,” Magda said.
“Of course,” François said. “I told you to continue monitoring him.”
“No, it’s better this way,” Rudy Valet said. “It’s time we put Ives in the picture, now that he’s used to us.”
“Actually, Mr. Ives,” the Kitchen King said, “we’re not robots at all. We’re members of a race that was old before your planet was born. In the course of our development we learned how to live without bodies, free of any dependence on matter whatsoever. This was the final stage in the evolution of intelligence, and we embraced it eagerly. Our entire race became disembodied intelligences, virtually immortal, floating around the galaxy, blissed out on enlightenment. Are you following this so far?”
“Of course,” Ives said, surprised more by his own calmness than by the aliens’ revelations. “But what are you doing disguised as robots in my apartment?”
“Well,” the Kitchen King said, “even though disembodied enlightenment is the highest state you can reach, you begin to get restless after a few centuries. You want to have a body again. For the contrast, you see.”
“Makes sense,” Ives said.
“The question was, what should we embody as? We didn’t see much sense in becoming human-type creatures again. We’d been through all that—putting money in banks and taking it out again, winning wars and losing them, falling in and out of love. We wanted to do things that needed doing. We wanted to help other sentient beings. So we checked out the inhabited planets in this part of the galaxy. We found some interesting civilizations, but they were getting along fine without us. We were getting pretty discouraged. Mr. Ives. Until we found Earth.”
“A wonderful place, Earth,” Rudy Valet said. “Here was a planet with several billion intelligent beings, and most of them were miserable because they had to do things they didn’t want to do. It looked made to order for us.”
“So we got into telepathic contact with Bardsley and a few others,” the Kitchen King continued. “We offered them enlightenment in exchange for their assistance. They accepted eagerly. Under our direction, they set up Robotgnomics and hired a small group of technicians to construct our robot bodies and offer our services. So far the response has been overwhelmingly favorable.”
“I find it a little difficult to believe,” said Ives, “that you’ve gone to all this trouble in order to do laundry and wash dishes.”
“That,” Lucy said, “is because you are not an ages-old, free-floating intelligence gifted with perfect enlightenment.”
“Maybe not,” Ives said, “But if you aliens really want to help, why don’t you give us a simple cure for cancer or teach us how to run our cars on water, or something useful like that?”
“People would only resent it,” Rudy said. “And anyhow, we’re not interested. Scrubbing sinks and cleaning the drapes—that’s what we like, and that’s what people want done for them.”
“What happens,” Ives asked, “if people find they really don’t want you around, no matter how useful you are?”
“Then we leave,” Rudy said. “We don’t stay where we’re not wanted. If you want to get rid of us, all you have to do is say the word.”
“I was just asking,” Ives said.
“Well, now you know,” the Kitchen King said. “But I see that it’s almost five in the morning. You must be tired, Mr. Ives.”
“I could use some more sleep,” Ives said. “But who are they?” He indicated the two unfamiliar robots sitting on the stove.
“This one is Charlie Chef,” Rudy said. “He’s just moved in with the Barlows in 12C. The other is Betty Babysitter, who has recently taken up residence with a family down the block. They just came by for a visit.”
“You’ll b
e seeing many more of us soon,” the Kitchen King said. “It’s amazing how many humans want things done for them. Good night, Mr. Ives.”
A few minutes later, Ives was back in his bed, watching the programmed shadows move slowly across the ceiling. Magda the Mood Maker was playing something cool and melodic, but also tough and masculine—the sort of music Clint Eastwood might have slept by. Ives was the star of his own movie, the master of his own life. What the aliens had brought was magical, all right.
Only one thing bothered him now, and it was just a detail. Why did Robotgnomics produce only single-purpose machines? It could have nothing to do with what Bardsley had called design philosophy, since the company wasn’t producing real robots at all, but rather, robot bodies for alien souls.
Then he had it. The Kitchen King had told him there was a whole race of bodiless aliens out there, millions of them, maybe billions, all waiting for their chance to serve somebody on Earth. By keeping the robot bodies single-purpose, they were providing themselves with the maximum number of jobs. With five or ten alien servants per human, that’s twenty or thirty billion helpers . . .
Ives had a sudden vision of Earth turned into a vast zoo. Instead of cages there were houses and apartments. They were filled with mild-mannered human animals, unaggressive and content, cared for by their little alien keepers, who kept them warm, clothed, fed, and amused. The aliens were offering the equivalent of a warm stable and a nose bag filled with oats. That was their idea of human destiny. But of course, that was ridiculous. The human race wouldn’t let matters go that far. Surely people would know where to draw the line.
Secure in that certainty, Ives fell at last into a deep and refreshing sleep.
1986
THE UNIVERSAL KARMIC CLEARING HOUSE
What is a Karmic Clearing House? How does it work? Travel into an alternate reality with Harry Zimmerman and find out. Learn what Harry did in an extremely difficult situation.
HARRY ZIMMERMAN was an advertising copywriter for Batten & Finch in New York. One day when he got home from work, he found a plain white envelope in the middle of the small desk in his living room where it had no business being. He hadn’t brought it in from the mailbox and no one else, not even the super, had keys to all the locks on his apartment door. There was no way the envelope could have gotten there. So how had it gotten there? Zimmerman finally decided he must have brought it in with yesterday’s mail and forgotten to open it. He didn’t really believe that, but sometimes an inadequate explanation feels better than none at all.
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