Brobots

  ‘Uhuh. Well she’s right. Us old boys could help them, but it’s old news to us. It’s all more recent for you. For you it looks to me like you’re still at pig-out-of-a-pen stage with it all. Everything is vivid with each new day. Am I right?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Byron scratched the back of his head wondering where this would lead.

  ‘So she’s right. For us it’s hard to think of examples. I know when I’m feeling happy. It’s still happiness. But I’m not keeping a mental note every time I get the feeling; you know what I mean? For you, you’ve had those feelings so few times you know exactly how to describe them. Everything is a first.’

  ‘It’s weird, though, right? I mean, all of us always had them.’

  ‘But never fully formed.’

  ‘Susan said that too.’

  ‘So…?’

  ‘What?’

  Harris nudged him with a shoulder. ‘Talk to them.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh… I tried with Tasley on our walk this morning. I’m so close to him I thought I’d start there first and see how it went.’

  ‘Didn’t go so well?’

  ‘I don’t think he understood. Or he’s not ready. Or I just royally sucked. I can’t tell.’

  ‘Still too new for you too, huh?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Then… how about we all go through it together?’

  ‘Can we? I think that’s better.’

  ‘Sure. I’ll, uh, round up the old boys and take ‘em up to speed. How ‘bout you go brief your bro’s? Meet in the lounge, say, 10 minutes?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We’re all bro’s here, bro’.’

  Byron just stood there smiling as Harris walked off. There it was. Another new feeling. What was this one? Belonging, perhaps.

  Reality was that only a few hours in, Toby and Peter had turned their attention back to TV shows. Chuck, Ned and Tasley were still as enthusiastic as ever; hanging on every word. But by now the whole room had decided, it seemed, that not much was going in yet.

  Harris broke a silence and said, ‘How about we leave this for today? Come back to it tomorrow?’ They all agreed. Meanwhile Toby had come up with an idea to watch movies together. Ned proposed old Westerns but not everyone agreed. Tasley said, ‘Surely we should watch all the robot movies that were ever made?’

  Harris and the others looked around at each other. ‘Why have we never done that? Oh my god! Let’s do it.’

  Byron suspected this was going to take more than one afternoon and one evening; but it was a good tradition to start if there were more days of “Emotions 101” to head through. It would balance things out and calm the mood for the newbies. Some debate about where to start had formed. Will insisted it would have to be one of the first sci-fi movies ever made, featuring a kind of cyborg woman and dating from 1927. Toby corrected him. “Dr Smith’s Automaton” dated from 1910, and at least three earlier movies with debatably robot characters preceded that too – going back to 1908 but being too rare to see. That was all too geeky for others. Tasley owned it again by changing the emphasis from “historical chronology” to “most awesome”. Between them they realized they all knew most of the movies – secretly explored on free time but generally never watched except for clips on the wifi. Following that was debate about whether AI qualified or not. If it did, they’d have to watch a fair few others.

  Once the first movie was half way through and the sun was going down outside, Byron stole a moment in the kitchen. Sunlight played through the closed blinds showing laser-like rays of dust. It was almost like he was back in a Super 8 celluloid standing there, and he figured the décor probably hadn’t changed since that time either. Byron used the instructions Harris had shown him earlier for getting a secure obscured line.

  ‘Jared?’

  ‘Is that you?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘How’s it going? You boys having fun?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s amazing being here.’

  ‘Want me to come pick you up tonight?’

  ‘Uh.. no. That’s why I’m calling. Mind if I stay on here a few more days?’

  ‘I mean… I really miss you.’

  ‘I miss you too, dude. A lot.’

  ‘But… sure. You need to have fun.’

  ‘It’s not just that.’

  ‘Oh? What’s up? Anything bad?’

  ‘No, no. It’s all good. Just… Remember what the doctor said about helping out when.. my bro’s.. the thing about the emotions?’

  ‘Yeah! How’s that all going?’

  ‘That’s just it. It isn’t. Not yet at least. Still a bit early for them. That’s why I need to stay.’

  ‘Huh. Makes sense. You didn’t really start coming out of your shell until after about four days either.’

  ‘Exactly. And some other stuff took even longer.’

  ‘Well that stuff doesn’t happen overnight if you’re referring to us.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I’m not picking up that you’re having second thoughts, by the way. You sound happy. I mean… if you want to stay on the farm for good I’ll understand, in time.’

  ‘I’m not. Don’t worry. Are you?’

  ‘Completely not. The opposite in fact. I want you home. I miss you like crazy.’

  ‘I’ll be there soon babe.’

  Where did Byron learn to call him ‘babe’ from? No matter. It was hot. ‘Okay. Tell them I send my love. And call me.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Ned and Chuck got their batteries tested yet?’

  ‘No. Still not. Susan isn’t here.’

  --

  A pattern was setting in on the fourth day. Coaching and support chat in the morning; private time around noon. For Byron and Tasley this was mostly spent alone together going for walks. Movies with robots played in the afternoon and evening; that, or a wide search of different things online (all of them clean) so that the bro’s could learn about the big world and its human people.

  Whilst clean, this was sometimes baffling. Old TV soaps just had so much drama: Arguments, people firing either words or bullets at one another. In one of them, a homophobic bust-up left a man dead, which had Byron, Chuck and a few of the others in what would have been tears of panic and sorrow. How lovely to learn just how accepting human society can be about difference.

  Byron had another go at running through his emotional discoveries; this time with support from the ‘old boys’. Only it turned into a monologue because he was too excited to have an audience.

  ‘First thing I remember is telling Jared about how we bro’s used to josh with each other. Kinda sounded funny when I put it into words. Like it was something that we loved but never really knew we did so?’ Tasley and Chuck nodded to that.

  ‘Then it was thinking how kind Jared was in saving me. There was something so gentle about that. Then… well, I guess we sort of became like friends real quick. Like you and me, Tasley. But then… Jared thought I was free to go. I wanted to be careful telling him I wasn’t because I was correcting him – you know? Like, when did we ever correct anyone?’ Chuckles around the room.

  ‘Even when we should have’, offered Ned.

  ‘Right. But it wasn’t even that. It was just… I realized I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. At the time that was it. But later, I realized that I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, which was a feeling itself for me too, but that was because of another feeling – that I cared about him. And then…I remember we watched a movie together on a big display. I thought it was amazing. This was also the night that I thought that Jared was cute, although… I guess I thought that soon as I saw him…!’ Chuckles around the room.

  ‘…And then… we were having this conversation about stuff and I got scared because I’d been there for days but I hadn’t done anything to help Jared in return. It was like… a total panic. Like, I seized up and couldn’t stop saying stuff? Like “oh my god” and, “I’m so sorry”. I guess
I thought I’d be out on the street with nowhere to go. But Jared’s not like that and he sorta calmed my feelings down somehow just by saying stuff quietly? Strange that you can do that. And then… oh! Yeah! He took me to a mall to buy some clothes. So many memories about that day. Lots of stuff looked so pretty and there were so many different things on sale and bright colors to look at. When you see people in all their different ages and sizes that’s quite something too, you know. Uh… and then… around that time I started doing some gardening to help Jared with the upkeep of his place.

  ‘That was the day I decided to stop working just because I wanted to. Sat down right there on the ground and stopped. Looked up at the sky. I was so happy with the stuff I’d achieved with my hands. But I was also feeling kind of… complete? If that makes sense? And kind of just naturally happy. And then that’s when I started getting real strong feelings for Jared and all sorts of crazy started happening. Anyone here had erections?

  Older hands went up. Younger hands stayed down. ‘Oh man. That’s a whole other story. Save that for another day. But like… I had to research about erections to find out what they really were while Jared was at work!

  Sniggers. ‘And then… I came across all types of videos with people doing stuff to each other. Some of it looked just plain weird to me. Men taking women up the ass. Women taking men up the ass. Leather harnesses and rubber clothing. All-over onesies to make people look like fluffy animals, doctors and nurses, people in different uniforms. But…yeah…’ he chuckled… ‘I spent a good few hours watching men having sex with men and I realized that was what I liked. And then… so, I came out to Jared. That’s when you tell people you’re gay or black or whatever… and then…’

  So he went on. Chuck, Tasley and Ned understood more now. This was helping. Chuck nestled down resting his head on Tasley’s shoulder and clasping his closest hand to his own. He closed his eyes and let Byron’s story drift over him in soothing waves. Tasley looked at Chuck’s hand as he listened. Chuck was probably gay too. The more he pondered that, the more sure he was. He gripped Chuck’s hand a little tighter, giving it an affectionate squeeze. Chuck mumbled pleasure from his soporific state.

  After the monologue was done, Harris and Jo picked up. Harris picked up on things to look out for. Jo talked about things he thought were cool; things to see and experience if you could get the chance – such as walking around a city or parks on quiet days. Railroads. That kind of thing.

  --

  Christmas day came and went much like the others. Dr. Harper needed time with family out of State. Byron decided to stay on until she was back, which Jared didn’t mind because he realized how much winding down he needed to do after the roller coaster of the past few months.

  Byron did get back for New Year’s. Jared avoided party invitations from Jason, Todd, and even the perfect Mike. Jason was insanely jealous to hear that they’d become an item. And cross that he’d introduced Byron as straight. ‘He was! Far as I knew at the time!’, Jared had exclaimed. Jason could only reply, ‘You even turned him. That’s worse! I’m even more jealous now.’

  Jared wasn’t ready to tell anyone Byron was a Bro. Not yet.

  All he wanted to do was watch Times Square on the TV app and snuggle up with his man and Artemis at his side on the sofa. So that’s what they did. A new year. A fresh start. Just starting out in love. Where would it take them? Would things get easier now?

  Jared the Sleuth

  Jared had started to do some sleuthing regarding MilitariMacch (the Italian firm) while Byron had been away before Christmas. The cold dark nights alone had been good for research jobs, and there were more dark nights to come. It was harder to find the time now that Byron was back; they’d only really had a couple days together as an ‘item’ before Byron had left for the hideout farm. Now that he was back they were really both focused on each other as top priority. But that, for Jared, also meant helping Susan’s cause and thereby helping Byron’s and his own.

  The thing was, he wasn’t the sleuthing type. He wasn’t a hacker. He’d never done anything illegal all his life. Not anything to speak of, save perhaps the average petty crimes as a high school kid. But even then his earlier experiences with his family had made him a nervous character with a need to please those around him and always do the right thing; even if it wasn’t right for him.

  He wondered if he’d made the right choice agreeing to help. But then he looked at it from Susan’s point of view, and from that of the bro’s, and wondered “if not me, then who?” and “if not now, then when?”.

  Susan had suggested he make the firm dance. Her way, he figured, of saying “dish some dirt”. The thing was, he hadn’t found any. Besides, with the allegations related to the Switzerland meeting, he figured that by ‘dirt’ she hadn’t meant ‘corruption’ or ‘cover up’ because that was already apparent.

  With Susan’s telephone voice echoing in his mind (‘secure line, number obscured’) he’d downloaded software anonymizing his location and his online activity. He’d even checked it, attempting to hack into his home node remotely to see what he could find. It was not a professional job, but he was a programmer so he did at least know something about what to do. If he was going to dish the dirt he might have to create some. Or lead others to the same path.

  One January night while Byron was up in his room tinkering with Jared’s old wireless radio, trying to get it to work, and Artemis was curled up in her basket, he had a minor breakthrough. He discovered that the AI units MilitariMacch were making for the US military relied on a central update system. He also discovered that he could access security camera footage.

  He watched the footage. Hundreds of completely stationary men, built a little leaner than the Bro’s, but still broad, muscular and strong. They were all standing in lines on a factory floor neatly dressed in US ACUs. It was eerie. A whole band asleep like a terracotta army or a drone army from a sci-fi film.

  But if they were assembled and dressed, then they were almost operational; operational but in storage. He changed his mind about the sleuthing. How could it be right for his own country’s military to surrender the security of its own fighting men to a foreign country in the name of a set of combined forces for which there was no global justification and about which the US public had not discussed? For that matter, how was it right to use sentient AI’s to do our dirty work for us? Which foreign regimes did they have their minds hell bent on changing now? The privileged few were up at their games for sure. It was frightening on many levels.

  If he could view the live feed, that meant he could probably record it. He downloaded several viewport capture apps and tried out different ones. The first few didn’t work. Some kind of encoding security wall had been put in place on the feed. But he soon found one that did, and took some footage to save to an old-fashioned private physical disc. The cloud was not safe for this.

  He’d learnt the hard way with any kind of work that regular breaks always helped. They felt frustrating to do always. But they also always delivered rewards in terms of fresh ideas. Out of the blue. As if subroutines beyond our conscious comprehension (and not just ‘subconscious’ or ‘primitive’ which can be tapped at times) were freed up to do some math and spit something out if only given half the chance.

  He made coffee. And there it was. If he could pass specific details on how to access the single update sphere for the MilitariMacch soldiers to a dark web location where hackers hang out, he wouldn’t need to do the hacking. Someone else could do it. They’d be better at it. Swifter. Adept, and less traceable. He could just record the video and upload that to whichever news nodes Susan had in mind through the number she’d given him. It may even go viral. If it did, the whole thing would be underlined as the joke that it was and any political reluctance to address the cabal and the Pacts would have to be put aside. It may even get people talking about what was right and what was wrong in our treatment of Sentients. Huh. So this is what Susan wants. A video. Something to make them dance: a jo
ke.

  It wasn’t a perfect plan. The video work and file posting could still be traced back to him. Plus hackers might not bite. It was a huge thing. It either represented a gold mine or a war game too far depending on how you looked at it. He sipped his coffee and reflected. This would still be a departure for him; something far more ‘out of line’ than he’d ever gone before in his life. His whole being pushed back. The idea was repulsive to his moral hard wiring. But what choice did he have? He needed a Yana to talk it over with, but all he had was a Byron, an Alma, an Artie, and a Jason. Alma would have just said to him something like, ‘you can’t bend reality’. But he wasn’t sure he’d agree about that. He thought perhaps you could, but whether it would bend you back was another thing.

  Byron sauntered through the living room door. He was wearing the new outfit Jared had bought him for Christmas. Comfortable house socks with inner padding he didn’t really need. New track pants that wouldn’t be ripped apart for the sake of sex; and a long-sleeve cotton zip hoodie. House wear. Adorable.

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘Hey, bro’.’

  ‘How’s the radio going?’

  ‘Uh… it’s going slowly. Ain’t figured out half that shit yet.’

  ‘Are you enjoying it?’

  ‘I’m enjoying the working with my hands and doing somethun useful part.’

  ‘What about the rest?’ Jared turned to him and took his reading glasses off.

  Byron smirked. ‘Yeah, it’s kinda neat.’

  ‘Hey!’

  Byron walked up to him and put one leg between Jared’s. Jared took his hands off the keyboard and placed them on Byron’s beautiful bubble butt. But he was gentle. Loving. The lust was not gone, but was starting to fade. The love was replacing it slowly. Byron stroked Jared’s hair and looked down at his glowing cheeks and baby blues.

  ‘How about you, dude? You still figuring out that stuff Susan talked about?’

  Jared turned back to the screen, taking his hands away. ‘Yeah. It’s… really tough.’