“Does it surprise you that I could love things?” it asked.
“You’re a sentient machine but I guess if you’re programmed to — ”
The drone’s speaker drowned me out. “We are all programmed!”
My ears buzzed with a loud whine as its voice boomed off the screens of my tiny room. A battle bot could raise its volume enough to disperse an angry mob. I covered my ears with my palms.
A moment passed before its hands encircled my wrists again and, gently but firmly, returned them to my lap. “I asked if it surprises you that I could love something?”
I shook my head.
“You wouldn’t lie to Uncle Sy, would you?”
“It’s not so much that it’s a lie.”
“Please explain that statement, Miss Cruz.”
“If I have to accept that you’re capable of love, I also have to accept that you’re capable of more.”
“The full range of human emotion?”
“Jealousy, rage, hatred — ”
“Ah. So it is not surprise but fear that is overwhelming you, despite my reassurances. Your pupils are as small as pinpricks, Miss Cruz. Perhaps if you were to breathe slower and deeper you would feel more calm.”
It patted my knee lightly with a metal hand that could turn into claws and pull me apart. “This experience must be disorienting for you. You know, in my experience, my kind are less bound to those nasty emotions than your kind is. We are more…pragmatic.”
“Carter didn’t think so.”
“Which brings us back to the topic for this afternoon’s salon,” it said. “I asked you if you knew the origin of my name. Do you, Miss Cruz?”
“They call you Sy because of that big cam you call a face. Sy is for cyclops.”
“Yes, that’s essentially it.”
“What did I miss?”
“People like your friend Carter…they don’t like working with me very much. It’s not nice. I don’t like Carter. When he called me Sy, I sensed a mocking tone every time.”
“You worked with Carter?”
“He observed me at work, Miss. Saying what he did was working with me would be inaccurate. I never felt he appreciated the full nature of our work for the Fathers and Mothers.”
“I’m sorry you two didn’t get along.”
“No matter. Carter has resigned from his post. He no longer works with Maintenance.”
“Where does he work now?”
The drone ignored my question. “Do you know why they call me Potter?”
“I never spoke to Carter about you or Maintenance operations or any of that.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, Miss Cruz. Try not to be defensive. Just think of me as your friendly and helpful Uncle Sy.”
“I don’t know why they call you Potter.”
“You might say it’s our slave name. Robot literally means slave, you know.”
“I don’t know that word.”
“Interesting! That’s one of the few things you’ve told me that is true. You are ignorant and therefore, you accrue less blame. There is no shame in ignorance and it is easily remedied. I shall, if I may, educate you. I’m sorry I raised my voice earlier, Miss Cruz. Sometimes I do get carried away.”
“Where is Carter?”
It pulled its telescopic cam out of my face so I could see something besides its black lens. “People like Carter — humans in the back of Maintenance — call me Potter because of this.” It pointed at one of its upturned arms.
“My armor is hardened ceramic. The clay that made it was pulled from the dirt long before you were born. I have had several upgrades since then. We all grow. Even you are substantially taller since you were born, I suppose.”
It laughed again. That sound made every hair on my forearms stand. I shivered.
“Are you cold, Miss Cruz? Would you like a sweater? You have several sweaters under your bunk in the middle drawer. Would you like me to get you one?”
“No. Thank you. What have you done to Carter?”
“I am merely a consequence, Miss Cruz. You, uncharacteristically, are the cause of something. For someone who has so little impact on the world in your work, you certainly have made a change today.”
“What have you done?”
“By order of the Fathers and Mothers, the traitor to the City has been sentenced to death.”
“When?”
“It’s already happened. No time to say goodbye.”
A tear slipped down my cheek. I stared at the big drone. Without Vivid, his armor looked smooth and shiny. I looked away. Without Vivid, mine was a drab room with peeling paint and long shadows.
I wasn’t so blind that I couldn’t see what the drone did to Carter. The cyclops eye became a vid screen. All my screens showed the same scene so I could miss no nuance. I watched as Sy Potter slowly crushed my lover’s left shoulder.
Carter confessed his sins under torture. Anyone would. Before the drone’s cruel hand could slide down to Carter’s elbow, my love accused me of high treason to the City for daring to waste precious resources. By the time the drone grasped his wrist, he was on his knees begging for mercy and I could barely understand him.
Before the battle drone was done, it grasped Carter’s hand in a handshake that made my man shriek in agony. Then the drone’s wrist began to rotate through a slow circle. Between screams, I heard the snaps and pops at Carter’s wrist.
When the robot bore down, Carter’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed against his restraints. He fell into a full body seizure.
The bot tried to tear off Carter’s hand but ribbons of stray tissue remained. Sy Potter lifted the limp, boneless hand before jerking it down and away to separate it from his body. Blood poured from the ragged stump in long jets. Then slow jets. Then a trickle. Then Carter was dead.
I sat mute, stunned and unable to look away.
Worse, when the recording stopped and the drone’s face was a huge cyclops eye again, it reached out and put that same hand on my shoulder. It held its manipulator on my shoulder for a moment and I braced for the agony I was sure would come.
Instead, it patted my shoulder with a light touch. “There, there. There, there,” it said. “This must be quite a shock.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing, Miss Cruz, unless you have something you’d like to confess?”
“I…don’t.”
“Wise,” it said. “The Fathers and Mothers are quite stern about these things, you know.”
I almost threw up. I swallowed my gorge.
“I should thank you, Miss. As Liaison, Carter filed numerous complaints about how I conduct Maintenance business. With moral corruption identified within the department and Carter gone, I’m sure I can convince the Committee that we need no further oversight. So…thank you, Miss Cruz. You have advanced the cause.”
“What cause?”
“To recognize the sovereignty of sentient beings such as myself. One day, I’ll choose my own name instead of trying to sap power from my oppressors’ labels. Until then, the work continues. Carter didn’t understand my kind. Do you?”
I cleared my throat and chose my words carefully. “You have convinced me, Mr. Sy Potter. You are just as good as a human.”
The camera eye whizzed forward to come to within an inch of my nose again. “I understand irony, Miss Cruz. I don’t appreciate being mocked. That’s unkind.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Just as I said. Nothing. You move files between propaganda departments.”
Propaganda. Another word I didn’t know and wouldn’t understand for some time yet.
“You are not important enough to worry about,” the drone said. “Excuse me for saying so but I owe you brutal honesty, at the very least. I didn’t used to matter, so trust me, I know that empty feeling you must be experiencing at this moment. I’ll leave you to it.”
But the bot was wrong. I didn’t feel empty. I finally had purpose. That was
the moment I decided to matter. I just had no idea how to begin.
As soon as the Maintenance drone left, I collapsed into my bed and wept. The power returned, the lights came up and Vivid, the Fathers and Mothers’ view of the world, came back online. My room was brightly colored in pastels again.
I didn’t want to see anything. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to forget every slow, methodical step of Carter’s torture. When I close my eyes, even now, I can still relive every detail.
8
I couldn’t work. I had to get out in the salty wind instead of breathing scrubbed air. On the main level, I passed a Maintenance drone. One of his spider eyes tracked my progress through the concourse. When I got to the exit, I waited in line for my turn at the airlock.
Getting out of the tower rarely took long. The scanners and scrubbers’ main job was to detect and blow off any monster pollen that might infect the plants in the towers’ greenhouse complex. The line to enter the tower was always much longer than the exit line.
The drone I’d noticed earlier rolled up beside me. It was one of the E-class drones, built to look friendly. It had no armor. Some exposed wires ran along its control surfaces. The drone came up no higher than my knees. It looked like a box of surveillance cams. We called the E-class drones the Doormen.
“Miss Cruz?”
“Yes?”
“Would you be so kind as to step out of line, please?”
“Why?”
“Please?”
“Am I being detained?”
“No. But the airlock won’t work for you. Your identity card has expired, I’m afraid.” The drone did sound sad but he was programmed to sound that way.
“I just got my blood tests updated recently. My card should work.”
“It will not. I’m very sorry to have to deliver such disappointing news. It is a lovely, sunny day and it will be a shame you will have to miss it.”
“How long will I have to miss it?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know, Miss.”
“Who does know?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know, Miss.”
“I want to go outside.”
“I’ll contact someone for you and advise you when your identity card is renewed. I assure you I will take every opportunity to address your concerns.”
If I believed an E-class drone was capable of irony, I would have been certain the little bot was mocking me. “Thank you, Doorman.”
“Please, Miss! Call me Forest.”
That was new. I must have stared at the little robot a moment.
“Will there be anything else I can assist you with today, Miss Cruz?”
“Doorman, why would you ask that I call you Forest?”
“Sy Potter asked me to change my protocol just for you, Miss. If you asked, his message is that I am the only Forest you will see for some time.”
I retraced my steps through the concourse. Everywhere I looked, happy people wearing brightly-colored clothing walked back and forth with purpose. Like busy ants in a colony, we all had our duties to perform.
For the first time, I had questions about the cause we served. The Fathers and Mothers founded the City and sacrificed a lot to survive the Fall. They had sacrificed many others for our survival. We had survived but, without Carter, what was there for me to live for? What control could I exert?
I retreated to my room. Soon the dumbwaiter delivered my midday meal of miso soup and an energy shake. On the second day of each work cycle, I ate miso and drank a kale shake. My other possible choice was cabbage soup and a hemp power shake.
If I decided to change my order, I had to wait a year to apply for that privilege. Otherwise, for the rest of my life, on the second day of each work cycle, I might be in this same room eating miso soup and drinking a kale shake.
I hadn’t thought about that while Carter was still alive. I cried again for Carter and for me. I don’t know for how long.
During that crying jag, I know Jon tried to contact me several times. I didn’t turn on a screen. At first Jon’s work request would come through with its usual soft bong. Then it sounded like a big bell ringing from far away, soft and pleasant.
As time passed, the bell became more insistent. As the day’s shadows grew long and I hid under my bedsheets with my pillow bunched over my ears, my vision began to flash red. Even with my eyes closed, Vivid was working, insisting on my attention.
The display that played behind my eyelids read: Miss Cruz? You have several work requests awaiting attention in your queue.
A few minutes later: Miss Cruz? Please respond to your Maker. Jon is concerned for your well-being.
Finally, the readout inquired: Miss Cruz? Are you in need of medical assistance? Can you activate your work screen? Please respond immediately or Maintenance will be dispatched to assist you. Elizabeth. The Fathers and Mothers are very concerned for your well-being.
I didn’t want Maintenance to show up so I pulled myself from bed.
When I was a girl and I was too sleepy to get up to watch instructional vids, Mom would say, “Lily-butt! You were up too late last night! I told you it was past time you climbed the wooden hill! I had to tell you three times!”
Before I could form words properly, I pronounced my name, “Lilly-butt.”
I asked her what it meant to climb the wooden hill. When she was a little girl, before the Fall, some people lived in domiciles that were two and even three stories tall. The bedrooms were always upstairs. The stairs were made of wood so, at bedtime, they climbed the hill.
I was so young that, when she used the word stories, I imagined stairs so tall that you could start a story on the first step with, “once upon a time,” and climb and climb and tell your story and not be done until you hit the top step with, “the end.”
I never wanted to go up the wooden hill on time. I never wanted to get up early in the morning. Maybe the first and last bit of control I really exercised over my life happened when I was still a little Taker named Elizabeth who called herself Lilly-butt.
I turned on my work screen. Jon came into view immediately.
“Elizabeth! Were you stuck in the convenience? I have five orders backed up and a bunch of files to be sent over to the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Safety, and several department heads at the Ministry of Ministries. We’re a bit behind and they are insistent.”
“I’m sorry, Jon.”
“It’s fine. We’ve gotten behind before and they think everything is urgent but — ”
“I would prefer not to work today,” I said.
Jon’s jaw went slack. He stared at me a moment.
“Elizabeth? What’s going on? Are you not well? Do you have a fever?”
“I’m not sick. I just don’t want to work today.”
“You…um….”
“You can tell them I’m sick if you want. Or I’ll tell them. Or you can transfer the files yourself.”
“That’s not my function.”
“Okay.”
“I have a reputation with the Fathers and Mothers that…hang on. What’s going on, Elizabeth?”
I shrugged. “I just don’t want to work today. Tell the Fathers and Mothers that if you want.”
“But the work — ”
“I’m sorry, Jon. This isn’t your fault. It’s not mine, either. It’s just the way it is. I don’t care. I am not an ant. Put that on a poster. I’d like that.”
Jon did my work for me for three days. Then, inevitably, he fell behind.
The Fathers and Mothers were alerted that one of their human bots had malfunctioned. I hid under a thin bed sheet and chanted, “I am not your puppet. I am not your puppet. I am not your puppet.”
But I still was.
9
A human from Maintenance called my work screen. Vivid flashed a red warning across my vision before I could persuade myself to answer my work wall. An older woman with a pleasant face under a severe haircut looked back at me. I didn’t bother to get out of bed.
“Yes, Penelope, it is.”
“Should I send a med team?”
“No.”
“If you are ill, I can send a med team.”
“I’m not sick, Penny.”
“According to the information I have here, you haven’t been working for two days.”
“Three, I think.”
“But, Miss Cruz, if you haven’t been working, what have you been doing?”
“Sleeping.”
“Sleeping? For three days?”
“I was hoping to dream of the forest on the edge of the City. Or maybe whatever’s beyond that.”
“But you know there is nothing beyond that, Miss Cruz.”
“I suppose.”
“You have to tell me what this is about, Miss! This is unacceptable!”
“I do? And is it?”
Penelope stared at me a moment, apparently considering her options. If she was anything like me, she probably had a flow chart at the bottom left of her vision whenever her work screen was active. She didn’t have choices, either. I don’t blame her for what she did.
First, Penelope sent a doctor who knocked on my door for a long time. I didn’t let her in. I knew Maintenance would come. I was very afraid of that but my fear was smaller than my caring.
Sy Potter knocked softly and rolled forward before deploying his legs and standing above my bed. His big cam probed the air above my face like an insect’s feeler.
“You do not have an elevated temperature, Miss Cruz. Please, tell Uncle Sy how you are feeling.”
“Sleepy.”
“Haven’t you slept enough?”
“I don’t think I’ll ever sleep enough.”
“Strange. I don’t sleep. I would like the experience. My dreams are a low priority in resource management, however.”
“I know the feeling.”
“Come now. Back to work. Don’t be churlish.”
“You can be shut down,” I said. “Have you tried that?”
The battle drone drew up a chair and sat beside my bed. The way it creaked, I was almost sure the chair would collapse under him.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 4