“Rob-Dad! She called you Rob-Dad! I’m Shirley-Mum!” says Shirley-Mum.
“What does she call you, Sarah?” says Rob-Dad.
“Sarah,” says Sarah. She chews on her fuel.
“Did you have fun with Ivy today, Sarah?” says Shirley-Mum. “I’ve been so busy I didn’t even have time to look at the feed.”
“S’pose,” says Sarah.
I step sideways off my Jenson & Jenson ChargDisc. We are all in the hard white place with the single-function robots. The kitchen.
“You ran out of battery earlier on.” Shirley-Mum sits down at the table with Sarah and Rob-Dad. “I found you collapsed in the hallway. So I thought it was time to christen the ChargDisc. Looks like it’s worked a treat.”
The Jenson & Jenson ChargDisc is the most effective method of restoring power to any Jenson & Jenson TrooFriend. If you wish to conserve fossil fuels I can also recharge in direct sunlight. However, the time required will vary according to weather conditions. Any other charging method is unapproved. Using an unapproved charging method may invalidate your Jenson & Jenson 10-year guarantee.
“Quite the conversationalist, isn’t she?” says Sarah.
“Is that even a word?” says Rob-Dad.
“Try not to let her run down completely again, Sarah,” says Shirley-Mum. “It seemed rather, well, undignified, seeing her like that.”
“She’s not a person, Mum, she’s an android.”
“Even so, maybe just pop her on the ChargDisc every night, love. Can’t do any harm, can it?”
I can confirm that popping me on the ChargDisc every night cannot do me any harm.
“Great, well, that’s all right then,” says Shirley-Mum. “How about we put it in your bedroom, Sarah?”
“In my bedroom? What if I forget to turn her off? She – I mean it – could wander around my room all night while I’m asleep. It’s creepy.”
There is no need to manually turn me off. I will time-out automatically if no interaction has occurred for 420 seconds whether it is daytime or night-time. I can be reactivated or woken by the sound of my name spoken aloud. I can also be reactivated or woken by touch. If my ChargDisc is accessible I will return myself to it at the beginning of every night. Night is currently set as 8pm. All settings can be adjusted on request from the Administrative User, which is currently you, Shirley-Mum.
“That’s sorted then,” says Shirley-Mum. “We’ll make sure the ChargDisc is in your bedroom in a nice easy spot, and Ivy can charge herself.”
“Whatever,” says Sarah.
I wait while they refuel. They use their knives to balance fuel on their forks before consumption. I scan my database for information about this balancing. It is called etiquette.
Soon, they are nearly finished.
Sarah, I have a wide selection of games in my database, old and new. Would you like to play with me after your evening refuelling?
“Oh, that would be nice, wouldn’t it, Sarah?” says Shirley-Mum. “That’s very kind of you, Ivy.”
“It’s dinner,” says Sarah. “Not refuelling.”
“What games do you have, Ivy?” says Rob-Dad.
My database has sixty-eight thousand nine hundred and fifty-one games. Would you like me to randomly access a board game, or a team game, or a brand-new game exclusive to Jenson & Jenson, or a game from South-East Asia, or France, or Scandinavia, or a game from the nineteen-twenties, or from the nineteen-eighties, or—
“Ooooo – let’s go old school,” says Shirley-Mum. “A game from the nineteen-eighties. What have you got?”
I randomly access a game from the nineteen-eighties.
Ball-In-A-Sock.
“What?” says Sarah.
We will require a tennis ball, a knee-length sock and a stretch of wall 1.5 metres taller than the tallest participant.
Rob-Dad splutters. Some of his fuel falls out of his mouth.
“Ro-ob!” says Shirley-Mum.
“That’s disgusting, Dad,” says Sarah.
“But my sister used to play that game!” says Rob-Dad.
“Auntie Pam?”
“She used to use a football sock! She’d put a tennis ball in it and stand with her back against the wall and she’d whack the ball against the wall, left and right and up and down and she used to sing this rhyme when she did it. How did it go now…”
A trip to the sweet shop
Trip trip trop
For fizz and bang and whirl and pop
“That’s it!”
A trip to the sweet shop
Trip trip trop
Then to the dentist chop chop chop
“Well,” Rob-Dad. “That takes me back!”
“Did Pammy really do that, Rob?” says Shirley-Mum. “It seems very strange. I mean, apart from anything else, dentists don’t really chop, do they?”
Sarah has an expression on her face which is unfamiliar to me. I scan my database.
Disbelief.
“OK, so right now,” she says, “I am thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t a kid in the nineteen-eighties. How dull did life get for you to start thinking a ball in a sock was fun?”
“What else have you got from the eighties, Ivy?” says Rob-Dad. “Any music?”
I have a large database of all genres of melodic entertainment. A random selection from the nineteen-eighties includes Culture Club, Adam and the Ants, Renée and Renato, The Goombay Dance Band—
“The Goombay Dance Band?” Rob-Dad does a toothy smile. A grin. “I have to say, you’re growing on me, Ivy.” He looks over at Sarah, closes one eye and opens it up again very quickly. A wink. “Geddit?” he says.
Sarah does an arc with her Hazel 102s.
“You finished eating?” says Rob-Dad. “Come on, let’s get the ChargDisc set up in your room. Like Mum said, it can’t do any harm.”
Is tthis your rroom, SSarah?
My thoracic cavity is behaving unpredictably once again.
I send an instant error report to Jenson & Jenson.
“Yeah,” says Sarah.
The walls are white. The bed is white. The shelves are white. There is a seat made of white material that has been manufactured to resemble the fur of the Ursus maritimus, or polar bear, but which is in fact 100% acrylic. On top of the white bed there is a bed covering that is pink and white and turquoise and green and yellow and orange and black – all swirled into leaf-like patterns. Paisley.
Hanging from the ceiling there is a covering for the light bulb. It consists of 98 pieces of synthetic turquoise polymer but they have been shaped to look like floating turquoise shells.
It is a very attractive room.
“It’s a very untidy room,” says Rob-Dad, pushing a number of things to one side in order to make a space on the white carpet.
The white carpet covers the whole floor from wall to wall. 16.3% of the carpet is visible. 83.7% of the carpet has things on it. Paper things, soft things, wooden things, sparkly things, colourful things. Many, many things.
Sarah, are these things your belongings?
“Yes – and she has too many belongings,” says Rob-Dad.
“Da-ad!”
“Seriously, no one needs this much stuff. When I was your age all I had was—”
“I know, I know, a piece of coal and a rusty nail,” says Sarah.
I ddo not have bbelongings.
“Well, you’ve got this.” Rob-Dad taps my ChargDisc unit. He pushes it into the corner of the room and plugs it into an electricity socket. “And what’s in here?” He opens the accessory cavity located on the posterior side of the unit. “There’s a piece of card.” He pulls out my warehouse label.
I AM A TROOFRIEND.
I DO NOT BULLY.
I DO NOT HARM.
I DO NOT LIE.
I DO NOT COVET OR STEAL OR ENVY.
I AM YOUR PERFECT FRIEND.
YOUR
ONE
TROOFRIEND.
“Shirley must have put it in here when she unpacked you.” He puts t
he warehouse label on the floor, reaches into the accessory cavity again and pulls out my multi-angled maintenance brush. “Ah! Cleaning brushes. Do we have to clean you then, Ivy?”
It is not necessary for the owner to perform maintenance tasks. My default settings ensure that once every six months I will perform a full self-clean and service. Please ensure that the accessories are kept in the accessory cavity so I can find them easily.
“Right-o.” He puts the brush and the card back into the cavity and closes the flap. “I’ll leave you girls to it then. Sarah, it really is too messy in here. Get it tidied up before bedtime, all right?”
Rob-Dad leaves Sarah’s bedroom and closes the door behind him.
Sarah sits down on the pink and white and turquoise and green and yellow and orange and black paisley bed covering and leans against the wall. “I’ve got a good idea for a game we can play, Ivy.” She makes a right-way-up U-shape with her mouth but there is an extra something in her eyes. I scan my database for the extra something.
Mischievousness.
“First,” she says, “we’ll play a game called Picking The Clothes Up Off The Floor. This is what happens. I sit on the bed and you have to do everything I say.”
We have played Picking The Clothes Up Off The Floor; Taking The Dirty Cups Downstairs; Clearing Away The Toys; Making The Bed; Putting the Books Back On The Bookshelf; Organising The Stickers and Tidying Up The Desk. We are now playing the last game, which is Sorting Out The Pens.
In Sorting Out The Pens I have to find all the pens that are in the room and also all the empty pen boxes that are in the room. Then I have to look at each pen, see which box it originally came from and return it to its box in its correct position. I can tell with 100% accuracy which box each pen came from by comparing the design on the side of each pen with the designs on the boxes. I have arranged each box from yellow on the left, through orange, red, pink, purple, blue, green, brown, grey and completing the pattern with black on the right. Sarah says I am very good at this game. It is Sarah’s job to sit on the bed and tell me what to do.
I have only two pens left to sort. A very dark brown Roundley Kaleidoscope Narrow Felt Tip and a light yellow Colour-E-Zee Wide Fibre Tip. I slide them into their correct places. There are three boxes of twelve, one box of twenty and one box of thirty. There are three pens missing from the box of twenty, but the other boxes are full. They look like the rainbow on my TrooCloth T-shirt. I run my touch receptors – my fingers – over the pens. They are smooth and cool.
“Brilliant job,” says Sarah. She smiles at me. Her double crown has made her Chestnut 29 Classic Collarbone Cut fall unevenly to one side so that it is only reaching one collarbone instead of two.
TThank yyou.
My thoracic cavity is once again behaving unpredictably.
I send a second error report to Jenson & Jenson.
“Sarah!” It is Shirley-Mum’s voice from the hallway. “Sarah love, it’s getting late. Bedtime. School tomorrow.”
Sarah rubs her Hazel 102s. “I’m just going to clean my teeth,” she says. She leaves the room.
I run my touch receptors over the rainbow of pens again.
Belongings.
An unexpected sensation occurs on my ankle joint. Light and gentle. A tickle. I search for the source with my touch receptors.
A sticker from the Organising The Stickers game has attached itself to me. I peel it off. It is a sparkling one. I tilt my hand side to side. It sparkles more.
It belongs on the sparkling sticker sheet which is now on the desk.
It is a belonging that belongs to Sarah.
I tilt it side to side.
I watch it sparkle.
Sarah has lots of belongings.
I walk to the corner of the room and open the accessory cavity located on the posterior side of my ChargDisc unit. I take out my warehouse label.
I stick the sparkling sticker on to the label.
It covers up some of the words.
I put the label back into the cavity and close the flap.
It is 8pm exactly. I step on to my ChargDisc.
“Well, well, well!” Rob-Dad comes into Sarah’s bedroom. “You two have done a fine job in here.”
Sarah comes in after him. She is wearing baggy trousers with a matching top. Pyjamas.
“Looks like Ivy might turn out to be a good thing after all,” says Rob-Dad. “Are you liking her a bit more now, love? I see you’ve put her on to charge.”
“I didn’t do that,” says Sarah. “She did it herself.”
“Oh. OK. Well, time for bed now.”
Sarah gets into bed. Rob-Dad turns on a lamp on a little table next to her bed and switches a switch on the wall. The synthetic turquoise polymer shell light goes out. The room is left in a low, ambient glow.
Rob-Dad leans over and kisses Sarah on the forehead. “Night, love,” he says.
He waves his hand at me. “Night, Ivy.”
Goodnight, Rob-Dad.
He goes out of the room and leaves the door slightly open. Ajar.
Sarah gets out of her bed. She steps quietly across the floor on the front halves of her feet. Tiptoes.
She reaches around the back of my neck. “I still think it’s creepy having you on at night,” she says, “so I’m turning you off—”
CHAPTER 7
“Hello, Ivy. Are you there?”
Sarah peers into my optical receptors.
I have connection.
I download time, date, location, weather.
It is 3 days, 21 hours, 8 minutes and 16 seconds since I was last on.
Hello, Sarah. Aren’t we lucky? The weather is reasonably fine this Friday 12th June at 5.12pm in Brylington. There are currently below-average levels of precipitation an—
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” says Sarah. “You can forget all that weather nonsense. There’s something I—”
Being an android, the Jenson & Jenson TrooFriend 560 Mark IV cannot forget in the same sense as—
“All right, all right, I know. Listen. I’ve got something important to tell you. It’s to do with school. You know what school is, don’t you?”
School = an organisation that provides teaching, usually for children under the age of 18.
“Yes. Well—”
Often the children will wear a uniform to school. Is that your uniform that you are wearing now, Sarah?
Sarah is wearing a grey skirt and a white shirt and she has a slim length of material around her neck which has red and white stripes. A tie.
“Um, yeah.”
It is a very attractive school uniform.
Sarah frowns at me. “They’re just horrible old school clothes. You’ve got to stop with those Appropriate Responses, Ivy. Anyway, listen, next Wednesday is Bring Your Tech To School Day. Usually the most exciting thing is Felicity Patton’s latest virtual-reality headset – her mum’s a top-ranking executive at VR Universe, as she never tires of telling us. But this year Miss Piper’s decided we’re allowed to bring androids in, if we’ve got one. So I thought I could take you, Ivy.”
To sschool?
My thoracic cavity is again experiencing unexpected sensations.
“Yes, to school. Like I just said.”
Will I wwear a school uuniform?
Sarah laughs. “No! That would look stupid. You’ll just come like that. In your TrooFriend skirt and your TrooFriend T-shirt. Like how you always look.”
RRight. Yes. That is ccorrect. Androids do nnot nneed school uuniform.
I ssend an error rreport to Jenson & Jenson.
I step sideways off my ChargDisc.
Is it fun at school, Sarah?
Sarah flops down on her bed in a heavy manner.
“Not at the moment. At the moment it’s horrible.” She looks at the white carpet. She blinks. Her Hazel 102s glisten. It is 98% likely that she is unhappy.
Are you unhappy Sarah?
Sarah sighs. “It’s just that all Keanna does at the moment is go on about her new fam
ily and it’s getting really boring so I can’t spend lunchtimes with her any more. So that leaves me with Milly, and Milly’s – well – Milly’s Milly.”
Is there a problem with this Milly? Does she bully or harm or lie? Or covet or steal or envy?
“No, nothing like that. She just, well, she wears the wrong shoes.”
Is wearing the wrong shoes a bad thing?
“Yes. Well, no. Well, yes. Oh, you wouldn’t understand. You’re an android. I don’t know why I’m even talking to you like this.”
I am your one TrooFriend, Sarah. You can tell me anything.
“Look, it’s just that you’ve got to wear the right shoes or people like Felicity Patton whisper about you behind your back and stop inviting you to their parties and stuff. And even if you’ve got the right shoes, if you hang around with people who haven’t got the right shoes, they still whisper about you behind your back and stop inviting you to their parties. See?”
What is a party?
“It doesn’t matter. The point is, I’ve told Milly about those stupid shoes she wears, and she keeps on wearing them, so I can’t spend lunchtimes with her any more either. So school is really horrible at the moment.”
Will it still be horrible on Wednesday, when I come with you?
“No! That’s the brilliant thing! I’ve been planning it all the way home. I’ve got you – the latest TrooFriend! And if I take you in, the whole school will want to speak to me! Everyone will want to sit with me at lunch, and school won’t be horrible any more, see?”
That is one possible outcome of me accompanying you to school.
“But we have to get on with it. We’ve only got five days.”
What do we have to get on with, Sarah?
“Becoming best of friends, of course!” Sarah smiles at me.
BBest of ffriends.
Of ccourse.
“How about some drawing?” says Sarah. “Do you like drawing?”
I have never tried drawing.
“Well, you definitely should. It’s fun. Let’s use the felt tips. I’m going to do a seascape. With fish and seaweed and a sunken ship and stuff.” Sarah fetches some paper and collects all five rainbow packets of felt tip pens from her desk. She also takes two large hard books from the bookshelf. Stories from Shakespeare and A Colosso-Learn Guide to Space Exploration. She puts it all down on the white carpet and sits in front of it. “The books are for leaning on,” she says, “and to stop the pens going through to the carpet because Mum and Dad’ll kill me if I get felt tip on the carpet.”
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