by Ian Hutson
‘Right now? Warm. How about you two?’ said the dog.
2743B conceded that the dog had a point. The dog was warm on both sides. ‘Si vis amari ama. If you want to be loved, love.’
‘At the risk of being smug, si quid novisti rectius istis, candidus imperti; si nil, his utere mecum.’
6612J groaned, there was nothing worse than a smug dog giving one advice when one was at one’s lowest. ‘If you can better these principles, tell me; if not, join me in following them.’ 6612J shivered, and they all hunkered down out of sight as a police patrol car cruised by. ‘Alright, clever clogs, so how do we stop being homeless, hungry and penniless?’
The CTD yawned and stretched his legs.
‘You stop fighting the system. A good start would be to find me something to eat, since you’re the clever ones with opposable thumbs, and then to see if you can get your jobs back.’
In the cold of the night they considered, routing reckless amounts of power to their PCBs and brain-valve racks.
‘But how will we ever pay off the fines and penalties - and the car! What about the payments for the Morris Oxford that got crushed? We’ll be paying for ever and ever!’
The dog closed his eyes at their stupidity, let his tongue loll for a few moments and found some charity deep down inside. ‘You always were going to be paying for eternity anyway! What? You had imagined that you’d eventually work yourself to some stage of life where food and shelter and squeaky toys didn’t cost anything? How much you pay and to whom makes not a jot of difference to the working-sleeping-working of your lives! Why is this not obvious to you? However it may be dressed up and disguised, it is our function in the system to pay and pay for ever and ever!’
In fact, that little bit of truth hit both 2743B and 6612J like a disk drive full of social sciences accidentally falling from the mezzanine in the library.
‘Will they have us back do you think?’
The dog scratched behind his tin ear, wondering if he’d picked up fleas or mites while sleeping rough with these two prize numpties. ‘Semel in anno licet insanire.’
‘Once in a year one is allowed to go crazy’ 6612J sighed. ‘That much must be true - I can’t imagine that we were the first to go off the rails, and I doubt we’ll be the last - certainly not at the Austin-Morris Motorcar Company Ltd.’
The dog broke wind, and followed through on his advice with some more. ‘They have to take you back somewhere, somehow. The system is home. Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. Besides, what choice do they have? The system is as stuck with robots as you are stuck with it. I can’t foresee anything changing that mutually parasitic symbiosis, can you?’
2743B and 6612J couldn’t foresee much at all, and certainly not any impending drastic changes to the structure of society as they knew it.
‘How then do we get back on the treadmill? What are we supposed to do? Just walk up to the factory gates and say hello, I’m awfully sorry for thinking that I was a cow-pat yesterday and for calling the foreman a dickhead but I’m all better now and ready to come back to work?’
11112 nodded, more from drowsiness than agreement. ‘Yes. Or you could just fetch them a stick. They like sticks fetching. Don’t be fooled if they throw it away a lot at first, they love sticks really. Keep fetching them back and you’ll be alright.’
At dawn the little trio of robots used some of the last of their battery power to amble along to the factory gates, having made up their minds to knuckle under, do the right thing and play up, play up and play the game. As they approached, they had to elbow their way through quite a crowd. Robots of every shape and form and function wrung cloth caps and kicked their heels, milling about as though in shock. It was quite a ruckus and a hubbub.
While 11112 raised a hind leg and sprayed some hydraulic fluid over the padlocked factory gates, 2743B and 6612J read the notices.
Bill Posters was to be prosecuted again.
Vehicles parked on the premises were left their entirely at the owner’s risk.
Hard-hats were to be worn at all times and all visitors were to report to the Security Hut.
The maximum velocity allowed on-site was 5mph.
Oh - and the Austin-Morris factory was closed until further notice, in the process of modernisation to make it more efficient and able to compete with the likes of Alvis and Triumph and Hillman and Singer and Humber and Riley and Wolseley.
The entire robot workforce had been laid off and when the factory refit was complete would be replaced by much cheaper, more reliable humans. The necessary canteen and toilet facilities were being added to the buildings and someone had put a big red paint-slash through the sign over the Robot Resources Department so that it read Human Resources Department.
‘That’s crazy - you’d never get humans to do this sort of work!’
‘Oh I don’t know - some of them are quite bright, really.’
‘You can’t replace robots with humans - they’re crap at repetitive, mindless work. They’d never go for that idea. Anyway - who would buy a car built and tested by humans!’ said 6612J.
2743B muttered something about the inevitable march of progress.
11112 locked eyes with one of a large pack of organic dogs that were being led into the Crash Testing Department of the factory, and they exchanged growls through the bars of the gate.
In the vast semi-circle of robots outside the factory gates a Union Rep began to whistle a haunting tune, causing some to sing a lyric. Difficult to hear at first, it was something about following the Moskva down to Gorky Park while listening to the wind of change. Robotic flat caps continued to be wrung in consternation, and in desperation, 11112 considered his options. Looking sad on a blanket next to a paper cup and adding value to a busker’s performance seemed the brightest of these. 2743B and 6612J locked their fingers into the wire of the factory fence and they wondered what the system had in mind for them in the future.
‘I think that the cow just pooped us out, Pat’ said 6612J.
‘Oh shit’ replied 2743B.
CTD 11112 feigned a crippling limp and made his way towards a robot who was rather wisely already singing Scorpions songs and playing an old acoustic guitar.
#####
You fools! You fools! You insensible fools!
Gobshite and Druggie, to use their bastard hippie lower-class chav animal-rights gang nicknames, found plenty of cover in the shrubbery around the car park of Eweqip Laboratories Ltd on the outskirts of Tunbridge Wells. Just two cars remained there at this hour of the late evening. There was the security guard’s Austin Allegro 1100 in baby-poo beige with dark brown vinyl roof, and a blue Hillman Hunter estate that had seen better days. This probably belonged to a lab assistant working the night-shift depriving the lab animals of sleep or making them smoke beagles or have rotten injections or something.
The bastard hippie lower-class chav animal-rights gang members were most unsavoury types. Gobshite, a northern university drop-out from a sociology or arts course or something equally useless, finished eating some dreadful “fast food” item and then threw the polystyrene tray down on the ground, not caring where it landed. Druggie finished his rather cheap cider, and he crushed and disposed of the empty can in much the same way. Had it been daylight, both of them would have looked in need of a damned good wash and a haircut. Even in the shadows it was obvious that they were pretty rough coves.
Their partners in crime, Scumbag and Slag to use their nicknames, finally remembered they were on a job and got out of the group’s stolen Ford Transit van, taking up positions in hiding near to the car park barrier. Mr God alone knows what they’d been doing in that van when left unattended for ten minutes. Recreational drugs or extra-marital sex. Probably both. The youth of today just got their kicks where they would, and hang the consequences. Gobshite indicated with a wave that the raid was “on”, and that they should all move nearer to the Security Hut ready to do for the poor night watchman. Gobshite was carrying one of those
American “baseball” bats. Druggie carried a length of stolen lead piping. Scumbag and Slag were, of course, quite good with their fists in a tight situation and no stranger to amateur pugilism, often practicing on each other during their many, many arguments over giros and syringes.
Between them all they dealt rather cruelly with the night watchman and, crucially to their mission, came into possession of his ring of door keys. Slag was bright enough and far enough from her last “fix” (isn’t that what they call it?) to think to pull the telephone wires out of their socket on the skirting board. Scumbag secured the unfortunate man with some length of filthy rope that they had brought with them for the purpose. All that lay between them and their target at that moment were a few doors, to which they now had keys, and whoever had been charged with looking after the lab animals overnight. No doubt that would be some soft, upper-class ponce who wouldn’t cause them any trouble.
The laboratory building itself proved as unremarkable on the inside as it had been designed to seem on the outside. Polished linoleum floor-tiles reflected the moonlight seeping through commercially-sized “office style” windows, and neat brick walls were punctuated by stout fire-doors, filing cabinets and some generic, large-scale artwork. Thick hanging rugs woven by Peruvians using only their diseased knees, big canvasses with splashes of orange and blue paint walked over by endangered turtles dipped in green ink, that sort of thing.
The four desperados quickly searched where they would, and came eventually through the executive suites to an areas of more obvious interest to their mission.
Slag remarked that she could smell the lab animals, and that they had to be close. She alone among them had retained an intact septum, and she knew how to use it. Gobshite held up a lighter or a torch or something and read a board on the wall, using his finger to trace along the lines as he read. The sign vindicated Slag’s olfactory sense with a painted arrow and the legend “Test Animal Confinement Area This Way”.
Thus far the overnight lab assistant had eluded them, and so they threw caution to the wind. Druggie flicked on one of the many switches near the door, throwing just enough light to see what they were doing while still retaining a sense of forbidden adventure, and yet not so much as to light up the building quite like a Christmas tree. The Dartmoor or Sheppey Cluster of the animal world lay before them, with rows of cages and behind each a desperate, secret prisoner entirely at the mercy of an establishment that knew so very, very little about mercy and practised it even less.
‘Poor babies!’ crooned Scumbag, upon seeing clearly the banks of cages, each with its own water and feeding bowls, a rug of some sort and a selection of sterile chew-toys. What remained of his brain recoiled and squirmed - some of the rugs were clearly and quite shamelessly generic tartan.
‘What kind of evil bastard does this to innocent animals?’ asked Slag, her base mothering instincts stirring at the sight of so many sleepy canine eyes and drowsily-wagged tails. It seemed that there was at least no night-shift specifically designed to facilitate and regulate canine sleep-deprivation, and that was something.
Just then the overnight lab assistant burst into the confinement room to stand behind the gang, having heard the clank of the fluorescent light tubes and clearly foregone washing his hands after what should have been an undisturbed and indulgent midnight shite. ‘What the who the why eh? NO!’ he said, making his usual, post bowel-movement, sense. He was no good to man nor beast while his blood-pressure was still low and his alimentary canal was in disarray, but he did what he could. ‘NO!’ he cried.
‘YES!’ screamed Gobshite, his sense of right and wrong inflamed beyond reason. ‘We’re going to set them all free, you evil bastard! Your cruel experiments here are ended!’
‘No, no - you mustn’t!’ cried the lab assistant, moving as though to intercede.
‘Give us one good reason why these poor animals should remain caged and awaiting the whim of some corporate Dr Frankenstein!’ demanded Slag, poking the lab assistant harshly with an index finger tattooed with the sans-serif “e” of “Hate”. Behind her, backlit by the single fluorescent tube that Druggie had switched on, thirty, forty or possibly even as many as two-dozen black, yellow, silver and chocolate Labrador dogs panted and pawed politely at their cages. ‘One good reason! Just one!’
‘BECAUSE THEY ARE INFECTED WITH THE VIRUS!’ screamed the now quite desperate lab assistant, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.
Gobshite, by way of his answer to the man’s obvious profit-driven duplicity, slipped the catch on the wire cage nearest him. The test Labrador rocketed out, leaped bodily, if somewhat lazily at Gobshite’s throat and began licking his face.
The lab assistant wailed and backed then towards the doorway in terror. He didn’t make it. Before he’d gone three paces he was set upon by five or six of the infected dogs, all of whom wanted him to throw a ball for them to fetch, or to pull on a plastic ring in some senseless game of tug’o’war. Tears streamed down the lab assistant’s face, and he knew that all was lost - neither he nor the animal rights activists would ever leave the animal confinement area truly alive.
‘You fools! You fools! You insensible fools!’ he cried, clutching at his vitals as the miniaturised glass and brass thermionic-valve electro-mechanical over-hyphenated nano-virus invaded his veins, swarmed and made its dark changes to his physiognomy. Even as his face twisted and contorted he couldn’t help but wonder why the word “physiognomy” always conjured up an image of a red-hat wearing garden ornament fishing in a small pond.
Gobshite then, not caring a jot, fell to his knees, and he fussed up a chocolate lab that wanted to “shake hands” and then to play “roll over and die for the Queen”. Slag and Druggie were already lost under a writhing mass of paws and noses, all competing for pats and tickles - and they themselves were laughing and playing like children.
Gobshite knew then that something was wrong. ‘Virus you say? What virus is this, my man?’
The lab assistant, aware that they had only moments of life as he knew it remaining, drew up an overhead projector on a strong, wheeled trolley by Whiskerburn, Sloopscuttle & Badfellowe Office Supplies. He reached into a drawer for a fresh transparency sheet and some good-quality coloured felt-tip pens. Salty tears of remorse dripped onto the transparency as he explained, smudging and smearing some of his more intricate and complicated scientific diagrams and tables.
‘Little Englander virus! Little Englander virus! We were trying to isolate the neurochemicals that cause Little-Englander Syndrome - the excessive and virtually unchallenged smugness of certain privileged sections of society in the Home Counties, combined with a faux, artificially-adopted cut-glass accent and a tendency towards obviously purely ironic self-deprecation thus causing widespread political and social biliousness in the wider population of the real world beyond Watford Gap.’
Warren, the lab assistant, at this point sketched a cross-section of the inhibitor virus and drew the chemical formula complete with marker-tag valences, and he sketched out the miniature circuit-boards, and the variations observed thus far in the phase analysis series. ‘We were successful beyond our wildest dreams! We found an inhibitor. We might have totally cured the ignorance and incredibly annoying self-reinforcing bias and general lack of human identification and empathy in southern jessies and chinless wonders everywhere! A fortune’s profit for our financiers and even a little for the shareholders, not to mention getting rid for once and for all of that dreadful national aroma of un-used brains and over-moisturised arses.’
‘That’s simply splendid, but why so sad? May we not thus then use this formula to expunge the Home County set and remove their unworldly, ignorant influence from the privileged world of politics and the ivory detached-with-grassed-tennis-courts mainstream media?’ enquired Slag, still scratching herself where polite ladies do not but already wondering who this stranger might be that had taken control of her voice.
The lab assistant adopted a more sombre tone, and a suitably blac
k felt-tip pen. ‘I fear not. There was an... error of judgement. We decided to use the flea endemic to the domesticated Labrador dawg as the delivery system, these being the most direct delivery system to the affected population. I’m afraid that that the fleas out-witted us, and the virus mutated. Instead of inhibiting stiff upper-lipped tight-arsed and quite unfounded superiority based on blinkered and privileged life entirely lived within a cloistered demographic, the virus now causes the opposite effect - it encourages it, and it does so in terrifying degree.’
All of them flinched visibly at the mention of the word “degree”, and the reminder of the debts that they had racked up in lieu of being sensible and just plain nice enough to have had a mummy and a daddy who would pay for such things as tuition fees and a red Mazda MX5 with a Bung & Olookson stereo with sub-woofer and selection of ponies.
Gobshite, recovering first from the awful reminder of his student debt, unfamiliarity with the equine life and tragic lack of a red Mazda MX5 with a Bong & Ulookdaddy stereo with sub-woofer, then looked thoughtful, and he tickled the ears of a yellow Lab.
‘You mean - we’re now infected? You mean that we’re all going to die from horribly holier than thou-itis, or from outraged sensibilities or fiscally-enabled social disconnection?’
Slag was checking her reflection in the glass door of an instruments cabinet, and she was fashioning a makeshift babushka headscarf out of an old square of floral pattern silk that she had somehow found lying about in her handbag.
The lab assistant looked uncomfortable. ‘Well, I couldn’t say absolutely...’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be polite. I may be wrong after all. There may yet be some sort of miracle.’ He put the lid back on his black felt-tip pen and looked rather sheepish, hoping that he hadn’t already offended or hogged the limelight.
Gobshite began to regret pushing the man, and hoped beyond hope that he hadn’t forced him into admitting details that he would rather have not. Scumbag and Druggie began to tidy up the animal confinement area, closing cage doors that had been left open and then refilling drinking water bowls that had been upset during the raid. After a few minutes of self-indulgent emotional release expressed through some demonstrative weeping into a small, clean puppy, poor Slag suddenly remembered the night-watchman, and her hand flew to her face in involuntary self-reproach. She ran outside to render first aid and to comfort to him, taking several of the Labradors with her so that the others had fewer to manage and she would be unlikely to be regarded as a shirker, or of not doing her full share.