by Rik Thompson
· * * *
ELECTRONICS STORE: SOMEWHERE ON POYDRAS STREET
He casually walked the aisles of electronics to the rear of the salesman who led the way. It truly was an electronics superstore. There were sections and sections of modules and components. He knew he could not ask right out for a module to satisfy the damaged one on a first-generation robot, but maybe he could find one that could be altered or reconfigured in a way to satisfy the need. But what if the damaged module harmed some other vital system to the robot’s workability, say the artificial intelligence? What then?
“What will you be using the module for, uh, Mr. …”
“Book,” the boy replied. “I’m certain I will have to rig it up. The circuitry will have to have certain functions though.”
“Hmm, maybe I can help with that. What functions are you looking for?”
Book thought for a moment, “Has to have motion function; hopefully, a writable circuit that can be cohesive to other circuits, and possibly a speech control section which can interconnect.”
The salesman scratched his chin, “Okay, let me see …right this way, Mr. Book, your last name is Book, sir?”
“Just Book, “the boy said.
“I believe we have just what you may be looking for.”
As the salesman navigated the aisles with Book in tow, he spied a module with a small adjustment panel and walked right up to the module and stood there.
“Yes, that is – you are surely a man who knows what he wants.”
“Is this module, can you get it here as a spare part?”
“I’m sure we do. Let’s go see.”
He followed the salesman to a lane full of boxed modules. The salesman checked the inventory and pulled the boxed module from the shelf and handed it to Book.
“The packing list should have the specifics, Mr. Book.”
He opened the box, and unfolded a piece of paper that held a schematic of the module. The motion control function was there although it may have to be adjusted a bit. He found the option of the writable circuit, as well as other logic gates that could be programmed if needed.
“This is great. It has options in addition to the ones I find the most important.”
“It is quite reconfigurable, as there are other electronics that can connect to the main board.”
· * * *
He worked his way to the library. There he scanned the old editions of the Picayune and finally located the issue of the chase that netted the authorities Donnie. He was being held at a military installation, further up north, in Slidell, Louisiana.
The installation was much like a maximum-security prison. There was barbed wire topping the twenty-foot fencing, and security towers. Guards walked the perimeter.
It was after dark when Book arrived at the military installation. He was outside New Orleans proper with a few rides and then a couple picked him up. They were headed to the nudist camp further up north. He left the couple at the intersection of a road which forked to the right of the main highway. Just off to the side of the road that forked was a prodigious sign which read:
SLIDELL CAMP – GOVERNMENT PROPERTY – KEEP OUT
Book followed the road through the thick wooded area to just outside the fence. He took a few minutes to formulate a plan, a method to breech the installation; how he would get inside, and how he might go about finding his metallic friend.
Contemplation, then he got a break. It was all of a sudden and he responded sufficiently enough to pull it off.
A quarter-ton lorry pulled up to the gate, stopped, and the boy spied the electronic box on a pedestal. He immediately leapt from the bushes and rushed the truck. Nearing the truck, he staked out the spare tire holder just behind the bumper, now empty and dove for the opening, and he, concealed well under the truck entered the compound.
The truck rolled into the compound past some buildings and came to a stop beside a building which looked like a warehouse.
Book slipped out of the spare tire holder and darted for the corner of the building and right into a security guard.
“Freeze!” a guard said as he leveled a revolver at the boy.
· * * *
“Sylvie Robers, please.”
“Just a moment,” the operator said, “I’ll get her.”
“This is Sylvie Robers,” she said as she took the call.
“Miss Robers, this is Paul Frederichs, at Slidell Camp. We have your fugitive.”
Sylvie Robers had a flight booked for New Orleans. Then a federal car would take her to Slidell Camp.
· * * *
The boy was a military prisoner at the moment and imprisoned in a six by six cell. He knew almost immediately that the authorities knew who he was even so no one had come right out and said it to him, he knew it to be true. He paced the cell back and forth. What would happen to him now? He wondered about his friend, and what might be happening to him when the cell block door opened and a guard walked toward the cell.
“Sergeant wants to see you, boy,” the guard said as he took out a ring of keys. Book watched as another guard walked up behind. The guard stuck a blaster into the back of the first guard.
“Don’t move, or make a noise and no one will get hurt, and I will take those keys. But first, hand over your blaster.”
The guard surrendered his blaster, and the cell keys to the imposing guard. The guard approached the cell and handed the other guard’s blaster to the boy.
“Watch him, and if he looks like he is going to move eliminate him,” the guard said as his cap slid back on his head.
The boy could see that the guard was wearing a wig, and then –
“Donnie! How in the hell did you …”?
“We will talk later. Right now, let’s put some kilometers between us and this place.”
The guard was put in the cell, and Donnie strolled in after him. The guard turned around, and there was the robot. He grabbed the guard by the collar of his jacket with one arm and lifted him up in the air. The robot opened his metal mouth, lips covered with synthetic skin, to show a set of metal teeth, capped in white acrylic and in his best Clint Eastwood impersonation:
“If you breathe a word of this to anybody, it will be the last time you take a breath – understand punk?”
The guard did not speak, and the pair had a very good start.
· * * *
Sylvie Robers quickened her pace as she approached the administration building of Slidell Camp. Into the administration building she passed offices on either side of the hallway leading to the door of Paul Frederichs. Frederichs stood as Robers was escorted through from the outer office by his personal secretary.
“Ah, you must be Miss Robers,” Paul said as he offered her an outstretched hand. There was a look of disdain in her face.
“So, he got away, did he?”
“’Fraid so,” he replied as he took his hand offering down, “we had him locked up, and that infernal robot of his showed up. At least that is what I’m told.”
“And, let me guess – you know nothing of his whereabouts right at the moment?” she asked, sarcastically.
SOUTHERN SURGICAL HOSPITAL
Donnie and Book sat in the cafeteria of the hospital. Donnie thought it a good idea, and it seemed that way to Book after a bit. They had been on the run most of the night and by now Book was quite tired. It was only after the robot stated that he never got tired that Book managed to feel as if he had a grip on a second wind.
“Tell me, buddy… and by the way, it is so good to see you up and about.”
“You as well,” Donnie answered back.
“But as I am confused; do tell me how you’re all together again, and free to spring me from that jail cell?”
Donnie began to unfold the story. It was a rogue technician who had brought him back from the dead. Orders were to leave the robot on ice until he could be transported to Washington to be reactivated by military technicians there. Reports there would be sent to the WPCB, and the eyes of Sylv
ie Robers. Surely there must be information the robot could supply to the military in respects to what the plans the boy may have. A rogue technician, Bob Johnson would come along and chunk a wrench into those works.
“He repaired me; brought me back online and I plotted my escape. And here I am.”
“What happened to Johnson?”
“Don’t know,” Donnie answered, “I did not stick around to find out.”
Sylvie Robers wanted Johnson found.
The pair left the hospital, and walked along Lindberg Drive, toward the freeway. They talked of them being wanted by the authorities. Donnie didn’t give it much thought at all; one way or the other. To him, just being back with his friend was the most important success of the moment, and all the further adventures that awaited them as they travelled to California.
They took a motel room, and went shopping for some clothes. Book was watching television when Donnie stepped out of the bathroom, and twirled around.
“So, what do you think?”
“I don’t know, Donnie – don’t look too fashionable in a trench coat. No, I seriously believe you are not the trench coat type.”
Early the next morning, before they left the motel room, they tried out different strategy scenarios. It was in that session that Book brought Donnie up to speed about the wonderful woman he had met.
“You mean this lady picked you up, took you home and explained how you were created?”
“Exactly, it was all about intercourse between a man and a woman that created me, and I not only heard about it, I had a personal course on it with Abra.”
“Well, that resolves one issue, your creation. Now all we have to do is find your creators.”
“Parents,” Book replied.
Another part of the strategy session would be to follow one particular stream that involved Abra Simmons, and they decided that would be the best strategy. Only trying to hitch-hike would be virtually impossible with the authorities; knowing they were in the area and posting alerts to the locals what to look for, and who to report the findings to. They both agreed that the best thing to do right now was to solicit Abra Simmons’s help.
The wardrobe was decided upon; not too cosmopolitan, nor formal. The plan was formed and all that needed to be done was to put it into action, and the only missing part to the puzzle – where to wait for the robot?
“I can track you.”
“What? Wait a minute, how is that possible?”
“Pheromones,” Donnie answered. “All humans have a distinct smell, odor, or fragrance, if you will, that is generated from their DNA, and to a machine, like me, a robot, which I can turn into a moniker, and with my algorithm enhanced artificial intelligence I have the capability to track you using that simple procedure.
“Much like when a human passes gas.”
Book laughed heartily. “Well, I guess that is one way of illustrating the point, except I never knew a First Generation had that capacity.”
“I thought it a thoughtful concept. You have to realize that the First Gen robots had to mine asteroids. We simply had to find our way back to the ship, so directionally speaking this would be one of the main requisitions.”
“It’s all set then. You know where to go, and you have the funds to get there. I just hope that Abra will go forward with this notion.”
“I have an intuitive feeling that this will be so.
“… And I am off to Dutch Town, in the state of Louisiana, in the United States of America.
The robot thought it strange to be on a thru-way transport to Dutch Town. He wondered how it all happened; how he came to be on this bus, on this world, and in this country, from his small finite beginnings on the Moon. He ripped through his memory banks quickly, resolutely. It was almost surreal to his AI. A first-generation class C synthetic. But he could track, and as far as the metallic man was concerned, except for his lower-class synthetic skin, he was just as good, just as shiny and new as the best the world had to offer. He smiled to himself when he thought of the great adventure ahead. He, just a simple piece of man’s technology now off on an important mission. His intellect continued to wander off, until –
“Do you have change for a fifty?”
“Oh hello,” the robot greeted the woman across the aisle. He noticed and then gazed at the sunlight’s reflection, a reddish tint, on the darker landscape of the woman’s skull. He immediately ran pretty through his banks.
“You know, I believe I do,” he said ruffling around in his pockets.
“Is anybody sitting beside you?” the woman asked as she slid herself across the aisle.
It just so happens that the woman, Marriete, and Donnie were both headed to Dutch Town. Marriete, who was a widow, and fifty-two, invited Donnie over to her place for dinner, and the robot anxious to associate itself with any human being gladly accepted the offer. At her house, via a Yellow Cab, from the bus depot, the robot carried her luggage into the house.
“My, what a nice place you have here,” he said as he followed the woman into her house. “I can see by just walking through the door that you are prim and proper, and have a great sense of organization.”
Marriete smiled, “Yes, I have always been this way. It seems the last thing I want to do after a tough day at work is to come home to chaos.”
· * * *
The scientific world was quite astounded today at the International Scientific Symposium, of 2019 by the introduction of the first fully functional synthetic humanoid …Keith Senne
Scientific American, Andrew McKormic:
I was quite skeptical at this year’s symposium, as it was being sponsored by Electro-Tech under the guise of Tony Wade, and this company which touts it can successfully manufacture robots with an unheralded intelligence, and can replicate every aspect of the human genome, except procreation. I consider that utterly laughable. We have been there and done that, and guess what? It did not work. Okay, granted this company has created robots, (robots), which can mine asteroids, and a few other menial tasks, but humanity in general? Forget that.
I entered the auditorium with a few other colleagues of mine, and found our seats toward the front. Off to the side of the stage was what looked like a dinner setting. There was a table one might find in any household, laden with food, and glasses which were filled with what looked like wine. Sitting at the table all alone was a man. He never moved a muscle the whole time I stared at him.
From behind the curtain came Wade, and two other people which promptly seated themselves at the table with the unmoving man. Tony walked to the podium and thanked us all for being at this special occasion. Then our attention was drawn to the table. One of the men which accompanied Wade spoke to the unmoving man, and asked him to pass the potatoes. The inanimate character picked up the bowl and passed it to the man. The man said thank you, and, the lifeless man said, you’re welcome.
It was a robot! I had never seen anything like it in all my days. The conversation flowed around the table with questions to the humanoid that he answered most distinctly. I was hanged when I saw the robot clean his plate of food and ask for seconds.
The robot was able to fully function in artificial intelligence, but what really had me confounded was the food disappearing into its mouth.
Andrew McKormic
· * * *
“Pass the potatoes, please Marriete.”
Marriete passed over the potatoes.
“You’re quite the guy, Donnie. I loved getting you over here to have dinner. I liked you right off. So, what are your plans, you know, where’re you headed?”
“Oh, just out and about,” he announced smugly.
“I can see that,” she replied with a smile. She followed up with, “Where are you from?”
“Oh, from the Moon, err – I mean, Moon, Idaho.”
“Hmmm, Moon, that’s in Idaho?”
“Absolutely, it is; a pretty little town just out of Boise.”
The conversation was to become one of a prying nature for the
woman. She was taken aback by the stranger she now wanted to have in her possession. The robot’s capacity to understand what might be taking place was not available at all, and then there was the next thing that happened that really fuzzed up the robot’s mind. It was when Marriete got up from the table, strolled over to the robot, and kissed him square on his synthetic lips. It was all the robot could do to avoid a system failure.
“Ah, could you please pass the broccoli.”
“I didn’t know you had such an appetite, “she replied. How is your appetite for the bed?”
“Oh, I like the bed okay,” he lied.
Let’s see now, that means when humans go unconscious for a while, isn’t it?
Marriete reached out with her hand, and pulled on the robot’s shirt. “Come on, let’s go and see.”
The robot followed the woman into the bedroom.
“Just lay down there, big man, and let Marriete see to you.”
Donnie stretched out on the bed, doing what he was told, and wondering what might happen next.
· * * *
It was dusk; the sun was put away for the day, and the oncoming shroud of darkness was the period of time. The boy walked the emptied out residential suburban street, incandescent light above the street brought to life by the semi darkness of the night pushed about the dead leaves in the gutter, a slight crackle as the leaves dragged across the street. A commotion coming from the home to the left got the boy’s attention. A woman screamed as she ran to the porch of the house. The boy also saw a man backing away from the house. The boy noticed a glint of light on an object in the man’s hand - a blaster. The boy crept closer to the scene, and by now the woman stood on the porch crying, and began to yell at the man backing away.