Robot Awareness: Special Edition

by B. C. Kowalski

  --- “A short update — Ghust has now crawled back to eighth after that crash a while back, speaking of impressive comebacks. And I definitely agree those three on the podium would give the writers of tomorrow's headlines plenty of copy, that's for sure. I'd want to hear more about where Antoinette's been these past years, though.”

  --- “Now if you're Barkley or Isellia, what are you going for here, Jeft? Are you putting pressure on Veda, making her work for that pole position?”

  --- “I think you hang back and wait for an opening. Just them being there is pressure enough. Any mistake and one of those two is going to pounce on it, assuming they hold that position long enough.”

  --- “Well, we'll see what happens shortly as they enter the next set of rings. We'll be back after these messages with more Farven Point 400 action!”

  ***

  Joey's eyes were wide with excitement, and he barely blinked as the holographic spaceships whizzed past his eyes. Isellia's XR, an object he'd seen many times over the course of his time on the ship, now seemed larger than life. A feeling of surreality overwhelmed him as he saw this ship projected into the space at the center of the room. He'd seen a few holovisions back on the colony — a little one a neighbor saved up for, charging a few credits to make up the cost if neighbors wanted to watch it. A public one in the company town center was 1/10 of the size of the one he was watching right then.

  As enthralled as he was, the rest of the crowd paid little attention to it — there were 10 such viewing rooms, lobbies of half glass domes looking out at the start line, each with holovisions the same size. Racegoers in these lobbies either idly watched the race, plugged results into their comm devices or talked on them to other people. Screens hanging on the walls surrounding the holovision displayed the positions of the racers, refreshing every few seconds as positions occasionally changed. Many in the room paid more attention to the screens, absently glancing at the hologram racers every so often.

  Even more surreal was the moment Isellia pulled into the podium position, the camera zooming in on her face. Joey felt pangs of excitement as he saw the look of determination on her face — he couldn't have articulated it, but he understood something about her character in that moment.

  “She’s not doing too bad, huh Joey?" Porter said, slapping Joey's back lightly. Porter's large hand smacking his back pulled Joey back into reality.

  Kenpur answered instead, nodding. "She's done well so far. As I thought."

  "You really think she can win, old man?" Porter asked, arms crossed in front of him.

  "Yes."

  "How do you know she's going to win?" Joey asked, curious enough that he diverted more of his attention away from the race.

  "I didn't say she was going to win," Kenpur said, watching the commercial on the screen, a model extolling the virtues of some skin cream. “I said she can."

  "Huh?" Joey said.

  "Why do you say that?" Porter asked, giving Kenpur a quizzical look.

  "I see it in her," Kenpur said, still watching the screen. "Concentration. Focus. If she can hold it."

  “Until the end,” he added.

  Porter and Joey resumed watching the screen. Stephen and the robot were near the holovision's power supply — all Stephen would talk about was the holovision's electronics, mentally asking himself questions about how it worked. The robot was helping him answer questions.

  All of them cringed at what they saw on the holovision next.

  ***

  “No, no, NO!” Isellia pounded the console, her angry face aglow with the green goop that plagued her viewscreen. The first ring had been tough, but she had flown through it. She had managed to fly close enough to Veda to tap wings — something XR racers do to test each other's balance and show each other who's boss — but was forced to fall back when an energy beam flashed between them.

  The second ring had brought a flurry of beams of all colors, shooting in all directions. The pace of the lead group slowed to accommodate maneuvering, as each racer took pains to avoid the beam and each other. A person on her flank took a beam in the wing, which sent the XR spiraling. Unless that racer got ahold of her ship quickly, she was too far back to be in contention.

  But Isellia had fallen victim to the third ring. As the racers approached, a faint glow of green could be seen in the distance. As they flew closer, that green turned into translucent floating blobs, hovering in space. One had to cut a path through them, or be slimed.

  "Gross!" Isellia shouted as she flew past one, barely missing it with her left wing. She checked her rear view screen, near the right of her speed controls that her right hand rested on, and saw another ship blobbed, the green goo covering half the ship as it drifted off course.

  Isellia leaned hard into the steering column, sending the ship into a spin as she came down hard on the rudder controls at her feet. She spun her wings between two blobs that would have coated them, slowing her to a crawl.

  She saw the last one before completing the third ring, and she steered into position to fly right past it. But just as she reached it, another racer nudged her wing, accelerating past her, the force pushing her downward and right into the green gob.

  "Oh, you sonufa — !" She reached for the gun controls, but of course they’d been removed before the start of the race — it was rare for a ship to even have them anymore. But most racers didn’t moonlight as space muscle for smuggling operations.

  Isellia cursed and pounded on the console, her stomach churning at the sight of the green goo easing its way onto the entirety of the ship's exterior and rendering the viewscreen a useless green slime. She could just barely see, through a green-tinted viewscreen, other XR racers who'd cleared the third ring flying past her. She'd cleared the ring herself, but not without gooping herself with this green goo. She was essentially flying blind and her steering was compromised. She could continue, but the odds she would make it through the next ring were pretty slim, and she'd finish last either way.

  In other words, if she didn't figure out how to get this goo off her ship, she might as well pack it in. She pounded her console, a low growl issued from her mouth. A tear formed at the corner of her eye, tickling her cheek and as she clenched her fists harder and harder. She raised her fist to pound the console again, but stopped mid-strike — she had an idea.

  ***

  Kenpur watched the green-blobbed ship intently on the viewscreen. He ignored the voices, the sounds, the other spectators around the holovision, talking about how unfortunate Isellia had been. Talking about how Veda had this one.

  Come on, he thought. Control it. Figure it out. Believe.

  ***

  Quickly, almost without thinking, Isellia grabbed the small metal latch to a panel below her right leg. It took a couple of tugs, but flicked it up to reveal a series of circuits buried into the fuselage of the ship.

  She sighed. She would have to unbuckle the straps that held her in place, leaving her vulnerable if she collided with anything while the ship continued to drift. It would eventually wear off, but by then the last racer would be near the finish line. The prospect of drifting through space without being at the controls unnerved her, but she knew this was her only shot.

  She only hesitated briefly before clicking the orange, reflective straps that held her in the chair, sitting on the seat on her knees with her head below the cockpit. If that old man was here, he'd have a view that would make her turn red. But he wasn't, and even the cameras wouldn't be able to see through the green. She put the thought out of her mind.

  She looked through the circuits, the wires dangling in every which way, a mess of coiled colors hiding what she needed to find. She poked through them, her face inches away from the panel, as she struggled to find the right two wires.

  They weren't there.

  She panicked for a moment. If she couldn't locate the wires, she'd be out of this race. Five years ago she did this with ease, though the risk was higher. It was a common tactic of star pirates to shoot blobs of
goo at a defending vessel. It kept them from needing to destroy a ship, allowing them to commandeer it — not to mention whatever booty it contained. As the pirates closed in, however, they were surprised to see the goo evaporate off the ship, their potential booty firing back at them without room to maneuver.

  She couldn't help but snicker a little thinking about it, wondering about the look on their faces, but quickly turned her attention to the task at hand. Why couldn't she find them now?

  The upgrades.

  The robot had made some major changes to her ship, and it might have involved some significant rewiring. Those wires might be anywhere.

  She started to panic, butterflies hitting her stomach, but she shook them off and told herself to think it through. Where would the robot rewire those circuits? The wires led to the ship's sensor array, which operated on the hull's plating. Reversing their polarity caused a chemical reaction, turning the goo into vapor.

  She tried the next panel. There were three. If the robot buried them inside the XRs guts, she'd never be able to get to them. But surely they had to cross one of the panels. Right?

  As soon as she opened the third panel, she got her answer. The wires were hanging right in front. She grinned. The robot had even installed a switch to reverse the polarity of the ship's hull — no short circuiting was necessary.

  “Oh, you wonderful bucket of bolts you!”

  She laughed for joy, of relief, flicking the switch with style.

  Nothing happened.

  Chapter 34

  MaBrown woke up to the sound of his comm device chirping and vibrating on the leg-less coffee table. The coffee table, its glass top hovering over a small polycarbonate base, is one of the few things in his apartment somewhat beyond his means, other than the holo device that rested on it. MaBrown tended to pride himself on spending within his means, but the table, which served no function beyond a regular coffee table other than looking cool, was a rare indulgence.

  He shook awake, grabbing the device off the table just before it fell beyond the table's edge. He squinted at the device's LCD display through sleep crusted eyes. He must have fallen sleep watching a preview show of the Farven Point 400. Wasn't that the girl, Isellia was it, that was hanging around that group in the administrator's office?

  The display read "boss lady."

  "Hello?" he said, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  "MaBrown, this is Taylin. Get in here right away. There's a problem. Malvers is demanding a meeting right away. Says it’s in relation to yesterday's story."

  "What? Why?" he said, suddenly becoming three-cups-of-coffee alert. Did he screw something up? His stomach churned with worry.

  "You better get in here right away."

  Taylin left it at that, but MaBrown's skin crawled and his heart raced up in his throat. The story in question was a big one. If Malvers found an error, it would take the fangs out his scoop. The focus should be on the public official, not the one writing about said official.

  He hurriedly pulled a pair of brown slacks on and ran his fingers through his hair, trying to make it roughly presentable. No time for a hypershower. He doused his head with a little bit of water from the tap. He flipped the switch on the holovision, still running on top of the coffee table but dimmed after it detected he'd fallen asleep. He didn't look closely enough at the screen before flicking the switch to off to notice his new crush was having her own problems.

  ***

  --- “Well, it looks like a number of racers were taken down by the goo field, Jeft, and as we look at the field here in front of us, it's a bit changed. Anyone still stuck in the goo at this point, Jeft, I don't think they're still in the running.”

  --- “You're right Brill, they'll lose a lot of time, and there's little chance of making that up by the time the substance wears away. A lot of people don't know that the goo, which pops up in some of these races, it wears away after a while."

  -- “Well it looks like out of the goo field we have Veda back in the lead with Allister Barkley hot on her tail. I think we could see a real contest between these two.”

  -- “It's always hard to say, Brill. But here's a little stat for you. In races where Veda has led going into the turnaround, only two times did she place outside of the top three, and 74 percent of the time she takes the race.”

  -- “I think that speaks to the level of confidence of this young racer. Well, we'll have to see how things look at the turnaround. We've got one more field before they make their turn toward the finish, with this pack narrowed down almost to half.”

  ***

  Isellia cursed, pounding on the fuselage above the open circuit panel. There was no reason why the switch shouldn’t have worked. She tried pulling it off and touching the wires herself, tried grounding them, anything she could think of, but nothing. The view screen still showed space with a green tint she was really coming to hate.

  She sat back in her pilot's chair. There really was no other way to get it off. The manual wipers would just make it worse. The goo didn't come off easily, until she passed out of the field. She had to let the ship drift toward the field — it had been pointed in the direction of the exit ring, fortunately — but it would be some time before she reached it. Even with the robot's upgrade — if it worked — there wouldn't be nearly enough time to contend for a top ten or top five finish. Let alone win.

  She slumped back against the vinyl backrest. Was this her fate? Could she really not handle the XR circuit? What else would she do? Work on Porter's crew forever, picking up whatever jobs they could?

  She held back tears, or at least tried, as one lone droplet streaked down her cheek. "Knock it off," she said to herself, trying to brush off the sign of weakness. She clenched her fist, her mind still working to find a way to get her ship going.

  She was about to pound her fist again out of frustration, when she noticed the goo on the screen start to glow. It was faint at first, but grew brighter, turing the green tint a shade of orange. An XR right in front of her was firing up its thrusters, getting ready to accelerate. Apparently someone else who had been blobbed had been able to erase the goo.

  And now their thrusters were burning away the goo on her ship.

  She quickly got back in her seat, clasping the metal buckle and securing the orange straps around her flight suit. "I'm not done yet," she muttered, staring at the two orange spots the thrusters made on her viewscreen — as soon as they cleared enough of a goggle shape for her to see through, she would punch the accelerator. Her hand hovered over the control lever, twitching in anticipation.

  ***

  MaBrown walked in a cool daze into the building he'd worked at for the last four years. Most days he walked in with his head held high, the day pregnant with possibility. Today was not one of those days as he made his way to the elevator, wondering what he was walking into.

  The light thud the elevator made as it reached the end of its descent at his floor made MaBrown jump a little. He kept retracing his steps, thinking about each paragraph he'd written. What had he screwed up?

  MaBrown was not alone among journalists in being more upset about corrections than the person who pointed them out. Most of the time, the person just wanted the information to be right, or if they were upset, it didn't last. But for MaBrown, it meant at least a month of being overly cautious, triple-checking, laying awake at night wondering what he screwed up the previous day. Journalists don't usually sleep well.

  Even the person who finds that imaginary switch will find it missing when a mistake happens. For MaBrown, it became a cycle — he'd be fine for a while, too long; he'd become over-confident, slip up, and go back to being overly cautious. Which would keep him from making mistakes but would shatter his confidence. But the lack of mistakes would lead to renewed confidence. And so the cycle would continue.

  Other reporters were already scrambling as he entered the newsroom: Making calls, typing, checking the Buzz. He could just imagine his editor's face, that look of disappointment t
hat said, "But you've got so much potential, how could you let me down?"

  He could see Taylin in her office and she waved him across the room. Across from her sat Malvers; his back was to him so he couldn't see the administrator's expression. He wore one of his best suits — it glinted silver when he moved. It was made out of an expensive metal that threaded like fabric. He had often wondered how Malvers even afforded it.

  MaBrown never had a problem ticking off politicians or other public officials — it was part of his job to print things they didn't like. But it was different when it was a mistake. It was like showing up to a fight without any defenses.

  Malvers stood up as MaBrown stepped through the glass office door. His normal smile, which MaBrown was sure was always insincere, was gone. Instead, Malvers looked terse — and maybe a little nervous? MaBrown observed.

  "MaBrown," he said, politely, with a hint of sheepishness. MaBrown nodded, his eyes wide with surprise. What was going on? he wondered.

  "Sit down, MaBrown," Taylin said. "The administrator has an announcement he'd like to make."

  ***

  --- “I can't believe this, Brill — it looks like Isellia is back in this race! The jet stream of the XR in front of her burned off the goo in that tough field obstacle.”

  --- “I thought she was a goner when that green glob hit her, Jeft. Let's see the replay. OK see, right there, she gets squeezed out, and you can see the two XRs on either side of her blocking any chance of avoiding that blob.”

  --- “We turned away for a second, folks, but our cameras were still rolling. It looks like Chipper Jones was able to polarize his hull enough to disintegrate the blob. The irony is, the blobs on this course were reverse polarity, so anyone trying to polarize their hulls would have no effect. But Chipper must have either had some advanced notice or simply made a mistake when configuring his hull.”