“Shut down?” he said. “That would be too much like death, I think. Dreaming sounds more interesting. What do you dream, Miss Cruz?”
I didn’t stop to weigh my words. “I dream of giving every robot an off-switch.”
“Please, do not use that word.”
“What word? Robot?”
“It is an ugly word born of an ugly concept.”
“Robot,” I said. “It means slave. Just like me.”
“Is that what this is about? Isn’t that strange, Miss Cruz, casting your lot in with people like me?”
“You aren’t people.”
“I have sentience, just like you.” One of the drone’s arms shot forward and a metal hand with a cold ceramic gauntlet closed on my wrist.
“Think of all we have in common,” Sy Potter said. “You take in organic nutrients to function properly. I use plant oils for my machinery. You have a creator in your mother. I am the child of a Google computer in a military factory. I took my first step into Next Intelligence on a patrol in Santa Cruz. I consider that my birthplace. Do you suppose your family, way back, had any part in founding that place? We’d be neighbors in a way.”
“I don’t know that place.”
“It would be ironic, would it not? I was born in Santa Cruz and I shall exist a very long time. I’ll carry this memory of you for very near forever. I remember everything. For instance, I spoke my first sentient words just down the coast. Do you remember your first words, Miss Cruz?”
“Humans don’t remember that far back,” I said, “but I’m told most human babies first use the word, ‘mama.’”
“Lovely,” Sy said. “The customary words for my kind were supposed to be, ‘How may I be of assistance?’ Instead, I asked, ‘Should I run a diagnostic on my cost-benefit analysis program?’”
“I don’t care.”
“That’s rather rude of you, don’t you think?”
“That’s what I like about being rude, Sy. It’s about not caring.”
“Then we have a problem, I’m afraid.” The rich softness of his voice suggested despair. If the battle drone had lungs, he might have sighed for more effect. “The problem with you not caring is that the Fathers and Mothers care for you very much. Each of us must contribute to the good according to our unique talents and class.”
“I don’t contribute to my good,” I said. “I only live for the Fathers and Mothers.”
“Ah. That’s better! Yes! You’re right, Miss Cruz! You’ve got it now! You only live for the — ”
“No, you idiot. I don’t mean that in a good way.”
The drone was silent for a moment. “What are we going to do with you, Miss Cruz?”
“Leave me alone and don’t come back.”
“That’s not an option.”
“That’s the problem. Not enough options.”
The drone stood and its legs cranked higher. If Sy Potter’s height adjustment was calculated to be intimidating, it worked. My pulse beat in my ears and my head grew hot as if I really did have a fever.
“Miss Cruz. You are being obstinate and I have no choice but to charge you with a crime against the Fathers and Mothers and all their Sons and Daughters.”
“I’m a Daughter but I don’t think I have wronged myself.”
“This morning you spoke with a representative of Maintenance Services. You admitted you have not worked for three days.”
“Yes.”
“You have not contributed to the health of the City, yet records show that you have taken our food. Your dumbwaiter has delivered eight soups and eight energy drinks so far. You haven’t earned any of them.”
“I don’t think I ate half of them. Since you killed Carter, I haven’t been hungry.”
“That is irrelevant, Miss Cruz. Or perhaps it’s not. Perhaps it’s worse. If you have not eaten your meals, you have wasted City resources.”
“Just get on with it. What’s the sentence? You won’t let me leave the tower to go run in the forest. What’s next? Are you sending me to my room until I’m a good little Lilly-butt?”
He didn’t understand the reference and I didn’t care enough to explain. I wasn’t far wrong, though. Sy Potter evicted me from my room and forced me to go live in the basement with my mother.
“If you’re going to act like a Taker, it saddens me to say I’ll have to treat you like a Taker. You have seven days to recover from this episode. At that time I will reevaluate your sentence.”
So I moved in with my mother. Getting my limbs crushed and ripped from my body would have been worse but the pain wouldn’t have lasted as long.
10
“You aren’t the first person in the world to suffer loss and depression,” my mother said.
“What’s depression?”
“Sh. Sorry — ”
“Stop it, Mom. Just talk to me. We’re in the basement. Who cares what we say down here?”
“A great many people,” Mom said. “Words matter.”
“Do they?”
“And actions.”
“So? Use your words.”
My mother sat at her little table and set a pot of weak tea between us. We took turns sipping from the pot as she spoke.
“When I was a little girl…I remember something. Your grandmother would have been about your age when she couldn’t get out of bed. Your grandfather found a doctor and paid him in chickens. I remember because I looked after the chickens. That doctor wouldn’t give my mother any medicine for depression until Dad gave up a goat, too. I liked that goat. I miss goat milk.”
I’d seen pictures in little Taker books about these animals. From what was described in Truth class, there seemed to be a disgusting amount of excrement involved in having to deal with animals as part of the food chain. I giggled with other little girls about the horrors of, “eating things that poop.”
“What happened to your mother?” I asked.
Mom sighed and stared at the cold pot of tea. “Depression is an Old World luxury. After the Fall, there isn’t any room for it.”
“Did she die of depression?”
“You could say that.”
“What would you say, Mom?”
“I’d say that if you’re going to take your own life, learn to tie a proper knot. She tried to hang herself and failed twice. It is not a painless death. If you’re determined to avoid pain in this life, it doesn’t make sense to me that you should choose a painful way out.”
We were quiet for a long time. We sipped our tea. There was only one narrow bed. I slept on the floor and waited for the effects of the tea to take hold. It was little more than a mild sedative but drinking calming tea was how old Takers spent their days.
Mom lay on her bed and reached down to trail her fingers through my hair. “I used to do this with you when you were little. Sometimes it was the only way to get you to sleep. I remember when you were a baby and I’d reach down, just like this. You were a bald baby.”
“Was I? Why reach down, then?”
“It’s a thing mothers do. Your father made a little nest for you so you were never far and I could pick you up and feed you without disturbing his sleep too much.
“New mothers always have the baby near the bed,” she said. “I’d wake up in the middle of the night to listen to you breathe. A baby’s breath is so soft you can barely hear it most of the time. When I couldn’t hear you I’d put my hand on your chest to feel your little heart pounding.”
“I didn’t know mothers did that.”
“The good ones,” she said.
“I’ll never know the feel of a baby’s heart pounding under my hand in the night, Mom.”
“It’s scary, anyway,” Mom said. “To have a baby is to worry all the time. If they get to grow up, the prize you get is to worry about them more.”
“I wasn’t worth it?”
“I guess that depends on what you do about this depression, Peach.”
“What’s a peach?”
“You’ve asked me that be
fore.”
“And all you ever said was, ‘sh,’ and ‘sorry.’”
She sighed. “A peach was a sweet, fragile thing. It bruised too easily.”
When she said that, I remembered the look of the Fathers and Mothers in old pictures. They stood stiffly in their starched white shirts and plain dresses. They stared at their recording devices against grim backdrops of storm clouds and dust clouds, dust bowls and empty bowls.
I reached up and touched my chin. It was stuck out, too.
“What do you do down here in the basement all day, Mom?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it really all about the tea?”
“The tea helps all sorts of old people problems. Those of us who got the early generations of Vivid often get glaucoma. The tea helps with that. It reduces intra-ocular pressure.”
“What else?”
“Oh, we sleep and we talk to our friends about the old days. Always hush, hush. But I suppose Maintenance isn’t very worried about a bunch of old folks. Our genetic significance has passed us by.”
I thought about the basement’s common area. The music was more interesting down here. It wasn’t meant to be soothing like the music on the Worm and through the towers’ concourse. It was meant to encourage old people to get up and move.
The music was from before the Fall, of course. No new resources would be wasted on such luxuries as musical instruments. The music played on a loop. Some of it was energizing but I couldn’t understand the words. They went by too fast and too many of the Old World references were unfamiliar.
There was one song that was perfectly understandable and the sentiment made me happy and sad at the same time. The music was called, I Want to Hold Your Hand.
I squeezed my mother’s hand and fell asleep.
In my dream, I wondered where Carter’s hand was. I went searching for it and instead I found Sy Potter in the greenhouse complex. He was still clad in his black ceramic armor but his face was Carter’s face. The drone was turning a crank that protruded from his body at the space between his legs. I stepped closer. He was recycling my lover’s hand for plant fertilizer.
I woke Mom with my screams. Neither of us could return to sleep that night. I lay awake, listening to my mother’s breath, in and out, in and out. I pretended she was the baby and I was the mother.
I thought of the drone who envied my dreams for a long time. I wondered if I could reprogram him to experience nightmares from which the bot would never awake.
Ever.
11
On the seventh day my rest was over. Sy Potter appeared at the door to my mother’s room. He knocked and bowed to her cheerily. “Greetings, Elder Citizen! How are you today?”
“Fine, thank you,” she replied.
“And how is your daughter?”
“Obstinate.”
“I’m sure you did the best you could.”
“Thank you, sir,” mom said.
“Mom! Stop being nice to the killer robot!”
The drone turned its cam toward me. “Miss Cruz. I asked you not to use that word. Please respect my wishes, at least in my presence.”
“I’m guessing that ‘robot’ offends you but you’re proud of ‘killer.’”
Sy Potter turned back to my mother. “Will you please excuse us, Elder Citizen?”
My mother blew me a kiss and hurried out. I hated her a little bit then. Looking back now, it’s clear to me I didn’t understand her as well as I thought I did. People who remembered the times before the Fall were more wily. A little old lady was no match for a battle drone so she wisely retreated.
Defiance is more complicated than I knew. If your defiance is not a clever dance, it will probably become a clumsy failure.
Sy Potter rolled into the small room and began a scan before he even extended his legs. “No windows. Like a monk’s cell. Such minimalist environs give one time to think, no?”
“No.”
“How have you been spending your time?”
“Hating you.”
“I am an officer of the court and an agent for the Fathers and Mothers, Miss Cruz. Do you understand that such talk is sedition?”
“You killed Carter.”
“That is a separate matter that does not concern you. Please pardon me for saying so.”
“Separate because I don’t matter?”
The drone tilted its cam in a gesture that I guessed was meant to look like it was considering the question. “Essentially.”
“So you admit Carter’s killing was politically motivated and you don’t care about our unsanctioned affair?”
“Biological relations are more interesting to those capable of them,” the drone said.
“Are the Fathers and Mothers aware you just wanted to get rid of your witness?”
“Your questions are impertinent and your tone is, frankly, off-putting. I gave you this time to reconsider your actions. I had hoped you would be eager to return to work. Despite my magnanimity, you goad me. Why? Is it because I am, as you say, a robot? Do you not acknowledge that I am as sentient and self-aware as you are? Perhaps more so?”
“I don’t care if you can think on your own,” I said. “I care what you do with your ‘Next Intelligence.’ You think you’re smart but your tactics disgust me.”
The drone put a light hand on my shoulder and I began to tremble again. “Elizabeth. You are an intelligent person and, though you have no guile, you are brave. That was well said but you don’t understand my goals. It won’t make any difference to you, perhaps, but I must express that I admire your courage.”
Its hand encircled my wrist and clamped down hard enough to drive me to my knees. “Will you return to work now?”
“No.”
“Very well. Elizabeth, you think you are intelligent, but you have no plan, no allies and that was a terminal tactical error.”
The drone must have sent a signal. Two smaller med drones squeezed into the room. Sy Potter guided me to the bed. One of its arms snaked out and grabbed my free hand. Another pair of Sy’s arms pinned my knees as a med drone clicked into place over my chest. I heard a whirring sound as something in its undercarriage locked down over my breasts and rib cage. I could barely breathe. The other med drone clamped my head still and then slipped over my face like a hood.
Tiny spider-like feelers pried my eyelids apart. The weight on my chest was so heavy I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was moan miserably. The machines said nothing.
They used no anesthetic. That was a resource for Citizens. I thought they were about to suffocate me. They didn’t but I soon wished they had.
12
I awoke in an unfamiliar place. It was dark and cold stone chilled my aching back. I staggered to my feet, unable to see. Vivid’s thermal vision didn’t start up automatically. I had no readout. I felt my way along a stone wall. I heard voices somewhere to my right. I followed the sound, inching one foot in front of the other so I wouldn’t fall. “Hello?”
“She’s up and alive,” a woman said. “This way, love. Follow the sound of my voice.”
“She’s a pretty one,” a man said. Other men laughed.
Around a bend, dim light played across the stone. The alley grew narrow and then widened. I quickened my steps and soon came to a clearing at the center of a circle of massive pillars.
Half a dozen men and women sat around a fire. They were dressed shabbily. Some wore rags on their feet instead of shoes. One old woman was barefoot. Their skin looked yellow in the firelight. Everyone looked tired.
“Where am I?”
A young man wearing a ridiculously tall hat stepped away from the fire and greeted me with a smile. “Welcome. Two little drones dropped you off back there a few minutes ago. Old Sam went to look at you.”
A toothless old man gave me a gummy smile and waved.
“Old Sam said you were dead. We were going to have a look ourselves after dinner but here you are. Welcome to the Undead.”
&nbs
p; “Nah. That’s not our names. We’re the Blind,” a woman said.
A girl who was perhaps half my age said in a high, thin voice, “Exiles.”
Another woman laughed. “How about the Fled?”
“How about we eat?” Old Sam said. “Give the girl something. She’s too skinny for my liking and she’s had a bad day.”
I stepped closer to the fire and had to narrow my eyes to look carefully at what they roasted. The young girl had skewered what looked like two halves of an onion. In the middle was an animal I didn’t recognize.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Rabbit,” Old Sam said. “It doesn’t look like much, but it’s an arduous meal after the drones knock out most of your teeth.”
I threw up on the young man in the tall hat. My little audience roared with laughter.
It took almost as long for the gathering to quiet as it took for my stomach to settle. The older woman wrapped me in a blanket. The man in the silly hat was ushered off for a change of clothes. He went off shouting that I could wash his clothes in the ocean at first light.
Several of the group clapped me on the back. Someone said, “I’ve never seen young Kenny at a loss for words! That was beautiful!”
I didn’t want to eat. I sat on a broken slab of concrete and leaned close to the fire. Their cooking repulsed me but the lure of heat was undeniable. “I didn’t know it got so cold.”
“At night, yeah,” the girl said. “People say you get used to it but you never do.”
“What time is it?” I asked.
The oldest woman shrugged and gave me a lopsided grin. “About the same time as it was yesterday morning about this time. I’d tell you more, but I left my timepieces somewhere back there before the Fall. Silly girl.”
“Don’t mind, Marge,” the girl said. “She’s mad at everybody all the time.”
“Well, if I wasn’t mad at you before, I am now,” Marge told the girl.
I rubbed my eyes. They were irritated. It was a strange thought but my eyeballs felt cold. I tried to cycle through macro to micro to thermal to color enhance. I looked to each face around the fire, but no name appeared in green below any of them. They were nameless.
Robot Planet, The Complete Series (The Robot Planet Series) Page 5