The Virtual Dead

by E. R. Mason

Leroy Spungin scratched at the stubble on his pointed, unshaven chin as he watched the Cassells drive hurriedly by. He tipped the dirty blue baseball cap back on his head and smiled at his brother Ziggy, who responded with a show of brown and yellow teeth. Ziggy brushed aside the shaggy, oily black hair from his eyes and chuckled gleefully.

  "Piece o' cake, right, Leroy?"

  "Nobody home but our main man, eh brother?"

  "So, what's the plan?"

  "Easy! We bust in, throw the robot in the back, meet Icky's semi at the truck stop and bang; we're rich men."

  "What'll we get fer it?"

  "Prubly ten grand--five apiece. Set fer life, eh?"

  "Let's do it, brother--."

  The cancer-riddled, two-toned van edged slowly away from the roadside and rattled its way to the Cassell home. Leroy pulled behind the house, making several uncoordinated attempts before finally backing up to the rear entrance.

  The brothers jumped out, slamming the van doors shut with a clamor that would have alerted even a deaf person. At the back door, Leroy tested the doorknob on the remote chance it was unlocked.

  "Knock on it, Leroy, case somebody else is in there," said Ziggy in a rare moment of insight.

  His brother banged on the window glass of the rickety old door with a hairy fist, alerting the TEL 100D at its station in the study. It chose not to respond.

  "Gimme the screwdriver. It's an easy one," said Leroy and he held out an open hand while trying to see inside. He took the tool from his brother, and jammed its blade deeply into the slot in the door, cracking off a large chunk of wood from around the latch.

  "Wait, wait. There might be alarms or somethin'. Let's call out an see what happens," insisted Leroy, and he cupped his hands around his mouth. "Hey in there! Anybody home? Hello?"

  Since Tel lacked an adequate definition of intruder, it quickly decided investigative input was called for. The robot lurched forward out of the study and down the hall toward where the Spungin brothers were craning their necks to see. Moments later the domineering figure of the robot appeared abruptly in the doorway, causing both brothers to cry out in off-key harmony and jump back. Leroy held his left hand over his heart. Ziggy stood with his knees bent, ready to run.

  "Gentleman, please identify yourselves," demanded Tel, as it rotated its head to scan the area. Ziggy, farthest from its menacing form, gestured to the robot with one finger and spoke in a high-pitched, broken tone.

  "Would you excuse us for just a second, please?" He took his brother by the arm and pulled him a few more feet away, hoping to clarify certain unresolved details without the machine hearing. Tel, with its high-gain audio sensors, heard every word nevertheless.

  "Leroy, what the hell you thinkin' 'bout? We ain't gonna throw thet thing in the van. It's gotta weigh half a ton."

  "Yeah, I didn't think this part out. What'a we do?"

  "How 'bout get in the van an get the hell out a here?"

  "No way man, we're here to get the robot, thet's what we're gonna do."

  "Well how you gonna get thet thing in the back a the van, man?"

  "I'll ask it."

  Leroy took two very calculated steps toward the robot and spoke with wavering uncertainty. "Ah, ...robot...ah, Mr. Cas-sell needs yer help. He sent us here to bring ya to him."

  A moment of oafish silence followed as Tel debated within itself. It could not accept commands from anyone but a few specified individuals. Was this a command relayed from one of them? Additional investigative input was required.

  "Gentleman, please elaborate."

  Leroy returned to his brother, who stood fidgeting with his dirty, green coveralls. He furrowed his brow. "What's a-lab-er-et?"

  "What ya askin' me fer? Ah don't know thet."

  Leroy turned back to Tel. "Mr. Cas-sell wants ya ta get in the van and we'll take ya to 'em."

  Tel considered. If it did not comply and the command was legitimate, it would mean violating one of its program's prime directives. Clearly still more investigative input was required in this matter. Without further delay, it stepped forward and entered through the open rear doors of the van, taking a seat facing outward, waiting for additional input to aid in its evaluation.

  Leroy Spungin shut the van doors while trying to maintain an official appearance for the sake of his stolen cargo. When the doors were secured, the brothers jumped up and down with muted cries and high-fived each other before racing to the front of the vehicle. They climbed in and pulled quickly out onto the street and headed for the back roads that led out of town.

  "What'd ah tell ya Zig, this is a piece a' cake for guys like us. Our ship jest came in."

  "Too cool, brother. How'd ya get a line on this thing anyhow?"

  "Pure genius, brother Zig. When the big sink happened, I was casin' out the neighborhood over there, figgerin' that people would be evacuatin' and all. Ah thought the cops might be all tied up with what was goin' on. I was gonna bust in a few houses and take what I could get quick. So I'm drivin' by, and I see this robot hangin' over the hole, and Ah remembers thet Uncle Vini was sayin' how the mob up north was lookin' for some kind a' thing like thet. All we gotta do now is meet Icky, then he delivers it to Uncle Vini and the Mafia shows us all its gratitude. It's the big time, little brother."

  "Wow," replied Ziggy, and he nodded approvingly. The two men smiled at each other and continued their trek out of town carrying in the back of their ill-running vehicle a biped machine that was considerably smarter than the two of them combined.

  Ten miles outside the city limits, where the countryside turned to untamed forest, bordered by roadside canals, the incongruous trio began to have problems.

  "Leroy, pull over quick, will ya'?" Ziggy grimaced.

  "Whatsa' matter?"

  "I gotta take a trip in the woods, man."

  "Man, we just passed a bar and grill, why didn't ya say somethin'?"

  "Didn't think of it."

  Leroy mumbled under his breath and chose a small clearing along the road. He slowed and pulled into it, turning so that the van faced outward, ready to pull away quickly should the need arise. The brothers both ambled out of the vehicle and headed behind the trees to relieve themselves of the past evening's beer. In the back of the van, Tel quickly registered the stop. It assumed that the intended destination had been reached, opened the rear doors, and exited, well out of sight of the brother's placid stares.

  No humans were anywhere in sight. It scanned the general area and found a narrow trail that led into the woods. The path bore infrared signatures indicating it had been used by some form of warm-blooded creatures fairly recently. For lack of a better alternative, the studious machine headed dutifully into the forest in search of Professor Cassell.

  Having sufficiently restored themselves to drinking capacity, the Spungin brothers returned to their poorly mistreated van and hopped in. They pulled back out onto the road to resume their journey. Because the TEL had not closed the rear doors, a banging sound that was foreign to the vehicles normal clatter soon attracted their attention.

  "What the hell's that, Leroy?"

  "Somethin's bangin' in the back."

  Ziggy pulled back the soiled burlap dividing curtain behind his seat. Several seconds were required before the reality that the stolen robot was no longer aboard fully registered.

  "Leroy...."

  "Yea, Zig?"

  "There ain't no robot back there."

  The worn brakes on the van somehow locked the rear wheels and the bald tires smoked as Leroy Spungin stood on the brake pedal.

  "What?" he yelled, and he twisted back to stare out the open doors at the empty back end of his smoking vehicle.

  Ten minutes later the inept pair were back at the site of the improvised rest stop. They split up and entered the woodlands in search of their lost, and unexpectedly independent, merchandise.

  Within the forest, Tel continued to explore the woods, an environment well known to it but never before visited. It tracked the movements of sm
all creatures that remained hidden from the visible spectrum and listened carefully to the unceasing music of life that echoed through the forest. Though there were innumerable things worth investigating and documenting here, this setting clearly was not a place where the Professor would likely be found, and since its present directive was to locate and assist its owner, Tel retraced its steps and returned to the rusted-out van.

  The back doors of the vehicle were now closed and locked. It went to the side loading door, opened it, and took a seat behind the dividing curtain, shutting the large sliding door in preparation for the journey's resumption. There it waited patiently for its couriers to return.

  Leroy and Ziggy tramped through the thick underbrush. Their clothing became torn and dirty as they swatted at the persistent insects that considered them fair game. The poorly prepared brothers persisted for more than an hour before becoming so depressed and angry that they could search no more. Thorn-stabbed and mosquito-bitten, they returned to their van, irate and cursing, arguing fiercely as they climbed in to make the defeated journey home. Once on the road, the argument resumed.

  "Stupid plan, Leroy, stupid."

  "What you sayin', Ziggy, it's your fault."

  "Ain't my fault."

  "You was the one had to stop, you dink-head."

  "Ain't me, you fergot ta' lock the damn doors."

  "Ah did lock the doors. Ah fergot they don't lock on the inside. Ya should'a thought 'a thet."

  "Damn robot's lost in the woods and we spent all this gas money. Steal a robot; easy ya said."

  Just behind the curtain, Tel immediately triggered on the reference to stealing a robot. Other fragments from the conversation linked much of the unexplained data in its files. It began to understand the situation at hand. Abruptly it pulled aside the worn curtain and in a tone louder than necessary exclaimed, "Gentlemen!"

  The Spungin brothers screamed their inharmonious scream. While they stared back in shock at the unexpected sight of Tel, the poorly-aligned van veered off the road, down a short embankment, and crashed into a fat tree stump.

  The brothers slammed forward into the collapsing dashboard of the vehicle. The heavy robot ejected through the exploding windshield and splashed into a deep pond at the bottom of the embankment. A small tidal wave rose up as it sank quickly to the bottom.

  Leroy sat up in his seat and touched his forehead with one hand. There was blood from a small cut over the left eye. In his lap lay a pile of shattered glass. Ziggy, equally disheveled, resumed the pointless argument.

  "Just great, Leroy, just great. Now ya wrecked the van."

  Leroy sneered. "Ain't my fault, duffus. Where the hell's the robot?"

  "Broke fer sure, and at the bottom a' thet pond. Take a tow truck ta get the thing out now."

  The Spungins half-climbed, half-fell from the sprung doors of the wreckage, and in frustration attempted to assess the damage. The engine now lay forced back between the seats and a portion of bumper was visible near the front of it. Both the driver's and the passenger's doors hung by a single hinge, and all of the glass was either cracked or shattered.

  The unsightly pair staggered from the twisted remains of the van and continued their arguing as they trudged down the road toward the bar and grill.

  Beneath the stagnant water of the pond, the TEL 100D lay. Its creators had designed it to withstand up to eighteen positive G's and pressure depths of one hundred meters. The harsh incident had not caused it to exceed any of these limits, leaving the robot completely unscathed. It lay submerged on the bottom of the canal, face down in the mud and weeds. A few moments were needed to sort out all the unusual and erratic data that had been collected. Fortunately, the last few statements made by the brothers had finally allowed most data to fall neatly into a pattern, although the pattern remained exceedingly nonsensical. Returning to home base was now the next logical priority.

  Tel pushed itself up from the canal floor and made its way along the bottom to the surface. It climbed the short incline to the road, barely taking time to observe the van's wreckage. Muddied and wet, it paused in the roadway to run self-diagnostics. No cellular connection was currently available. Grass and weeds dangled from joints on its dull-chromed body, some dragging on the hot black pavement behind it. It carefully placed itself with its global positioning system and headed off down the road toward home on its oversized tractor-driven shoes. Like an accomplished, muddied, rollerblader on a gentle downhill, it cruised along smoothly at a brisk seven miles per hour.

  Farther along, the Spungin brothers argued more fiercely than ever. So intent were they on blaming each other that they failed to notice the soft whirring hum of the approaching, weed-covered machine.

  When the dominating figure of Tel was nearly on them, the distracted brothers looked back in shock and let out their trademark scream. Thinking the machine was now intent on revenge, they crashed into each other, rolled gracelessly down the embankment, and splashed into the same pond from which Tel had just emerged.

  The robot continued its course, rotating its visored head in an attempt to track and understand their actions. As they dog-paddled toward the water's edge, it let out a strange, but quite identifiable sound.

  "Neeeck, nck, nck, nck."

  Ziggy wiped the water from his face and stared indignantly at his brother. "Now the damn thing's laughin' at us, Leroy!"

  "No way, pea brain, it's just a dumb machine."

  "Well, it's smarter than you, dork."

  "Swim home, hoser."

  A short time later, Tel reached the isolated roadside bar. It was an old wooden building that had served as several different types of establishments over the years, finally ending up as an out-of-the-way drinkery. Gray wooden shingles sagged between the truss lines of the neglected roof. A long, worn porch ran the length of the building's front, ending in three untrustworthy steps on the right. Two painted-over windows were placed on either side of the entrance. The door had its own small, unpainted glass. A weathered sign, unadorned by costly lighting, hung over the front entrance. It read "Ted's Place."

  A dozen or so beat-up autos were parked close to the building, leaving most of the gravel filled parking lot empty. Across the sparsely filled lot, where the gravel met the blacktop road, stood an old-fashioned, glass-enclosed telephone booth. Tel quickly decided that a call home was a very logical way to proceed. It stopped and locked its tractor drives and walked across the stony dirt to the booth.

  Money was unnecessary. It had Professor Cassell's calling card on file. It awkwardly entered the booth, smearing mud on the streaked glass walls, lifted the handset from the cradle, and broadcast its own tone-generated numbers into the receiver from the hidden opening at the mouth of its weed-covered head.

  At the entrance to the bar, an inebriated patron stepped awkwardly outside for a smoke. The overall-clad man stood swaying at the door, fishing one finger in an empty cigarette pack, trying vainly to make sense out of the sight of a mud-caked, two-legged machine attempting to use a pay phone. He steadied himself and squinted with all his might, hoping to bring reality back into focus, but no matter how hard he tried it still appeared that the infamous swamp thing was apparently making a call. When no sense of reason could be found to prevail, he turned, and lurched back into the bar for a drink he considered to be more medicinal than excessive.

  Chapter 9