by Mark Roman
“Really?”
“No man, not really. The top guy’s on a cake-break. So you gotta sort it.”
“Great,” said Willie. Still covering the scanner with an elbow he turned to the observation screen and switched between external cameras until he found one showing the slowly cart-wheeling robot outside. He let out a sigh of exasperation and tapped the microphone on the comms console. “Calling InspectaBot. Come in, InspectaBot. Do you read me? Over.”
“Identify yourself!” came the brusque, metallic response.
“This is Lieutenant William Hilda Warner of Mayflower III respectfully calling InspectaBot 360. Over.”
Zak sniggered. “So that’s what the ‘H’ stands for! Suits you, dude.”
“It’s a family name, not a girl’s name.”
“No, dude, that’s a girl’s name.”
The metallic voice boomed out of the speakers, “Please enter your 16-digit PIN code followed by the hash key.”
Willie turned to Zak. “What’s the PIN code?”
Zak shrugged.
“I don’t have a PIN code,” Willie said into the microphone.
“Very well, you will need to answer a security question.”
“Go on.”
“What was the name of the first girl you kissed?”
Zak sniggered again.
Willie turned to him. “You can go now. I can take it from here.”
“Sure man. Understood. Private info.”
Willie drummed his fingers, waiting for the other lieutenant to leave. “Bet it was Mandy Minger, Space Cadet School swinger,” said Zak as he edged towards the door.
Zak reached the door but then floated back into the room. “I’m taking this with me,” he said, grabbing the PredictoHarness and floating out of the door with it.
“What was the name of the first girl you kissed?” repeated InspectaBot.
Willie looked around to make sure Zak had gone and whispered into the microphone, “None. I’ve never kissed a girl.”
“Nun?”
“Yes, none.”
“Answer mismatch. Identification failure. A new security PIN code will be issued.”
“When?”
“Two weeks.”
“This is ridiculous. Ask me another security question.”
“What is your mother’s bra size?”
“Easy. 40DD,” responded Willie without hesitation.
“Caller identified. How can I help you today, Lieutenant William Hilda Warner?”
“InspectaBot 360, could you please report your status?”
“Roger. Current status: stalled. Awaiting new instructions.”
“The new instructions are the same as the old ones, InspectaBot. Your mission is to perform a full building inspection of Botany Base to certify it as habitable. Do you understand?”
“Affirmative.”
“Off you go, then.”
“Inspection of base not possible.”
“Why?”
“Not within visual range.”
“No, obviously. You’re still in orbit.”
“Current altitude 57,842 feet.”
“Exactly. So you need to address that issue first. Have a good day.”
“Please advise.”
Willie sighed. “Look, land down on the planet, tootle across to the base and start inspecting. Couldn’t be simpler.”
“Landing permission refused.”
This stumped Willie. “What? That’s Mars down there, not Heathrow Terminal 3. Who refused you?” Even as he asked the question a cold shiver ran down his spine. Was it possible the aliens down there had already made contact with InspectaBot? Had they forbidden him to land? How had they done it? What had they said? With threats, or without?
“HarVard,” answered the robot.
“You mean the base’s supercomputer?”
“Affirmative.”
The tension in Willie’s muscles relaxed. “Phew. Please ignore HarVard. He has no right to refuse you permission. Although the fact that he’s trying to sounds suspicious. What reason did he give?”
“Transmitting message.”
Willie saw HarVard’s message appear on a screen to his right. He leaned over to read it. “My dear InspectaBot 360. What an inordinate pleasure to hear from you. We are greatly looking forward to meeting you in person and having the honour of hosting you when you come to carry out your important mission. We trust you will find everything in order. In the meantime, may I request a teensie, weensie little favour? Would you mind awfully delaying your landing for a bit as the base isn’t quite ready for inspection.”
Willie let out an involuntary laugh. “They’ve only been working on it for the past five years!”
He continued reading. “You see, it’s the builder bots. They’re such perfectionists. They want everything to be just right for the humans. Premature inspection would break their little clockwork hearts. There isn’t much to do, really, just a few last-minute soft furnishings that need arranging, but even so they’d rather you didn’t see it until it is all finished.”
Willie cleared his throat. “Technically, that’s not a refusal to land.”
“There’s a postscript,” said InspectaBot.
Willie scrolled down the screen. “PS I will reopen the landing pad when we’re all ready for you. Perhaps you could pop back in, let’s say, a month?”
Lieutenant Warner shook his head. “Now look here, 360. I am ordering you to ignore HarVard and go down there and carry out your duty. That’s an order, OK?”
“Landing pad unavailable.”
“OK, let’s think this through, shall we? We have a large planet down there. So you can actually land anywhere you like. Just pick your spot. Got that?”
A pause. “Risk assessment: terrain sandy, uneven, rock-strewn, pot-holed. Poses a 37.4% possibility of impact damage.”
“Just Do It ... That Is An Order.”
“Received and understood.”
As Willie glared at the image of InspectaBot on the screen he noticed a puff of gas emit from the robot’s behind and its metallic body start to drift towards the planet.
“Well, that was immensely rewarding,” Willie said to himself. But then he looked back at the peculiar message from HarVard. Why was the supercomputer stalling and seemingly denying InspectaBot the chance to land? Did he, perhaps, have something to hide? Was it anything to do with the aliens?
5. The Hanging Gaskets of BioDome
23rd March 2029, BioDome, Botany Base, Mars
High above the floor of the BioDome, a solitary gasket-fitting robot named Ero (short for Heroism) balanced on a rickety scaffold tower. Servo motors whirred and joints jerked as he reached a claw-hand down into a cardboard box marked ‘Rubber Pressure Seals’. From it he plucked a long, thin, cellophane packet and set about removing the wrapping. After pulling and tugging with clumpy mechanical digits, Ero finally gripped the end of the package between his jagged metal teeth and ripped it open, releasing a snake-like length of grooved rubber. He let the discarded wrapper flutter over the edge of the tower without so much as a glance at its bold warning label: ‘IMPORTANT. Gaskets must be fitted correctly. Failure to do so could result in air leakage causing respiratory failure, organ malfunction, and permanent human shutdown.’
Ero grabbed the barrier rail to steady himself while he raised the gasket, awkwardly grasped between metal fingers, high above his head. Telescopic joints extended at a snail’s pace towards the domed roof. After a long, difficult stretch, Ero pushed one end of the seal into the tiny gap between frame and polycarbonate panel. It was a delicate operation for which his stubby digits were especially unsuited. As he tried to prod the rest of the gasket home, the first end popped out and dangled down. With an electronic grunt he pushed it back into place, but this only made the middle part sag. And when he tried to prod the middle back, the two ends flopped out, making it momentarily resemble a Mexican bandit’s moustache. And then it dropped out altogether. Moving as fast as his servo-joints
allowed, Ero tried to catch it, but his fumbling fingers grabbed and missed and, for the thirty-fourth time that morning, the rubbery thing fell to the BioDome floor, fifty metres below.
Ero watched it bounce, give a little death wiggle and then lie still, on top of thirty-three of its fellow gaskets.
Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks - Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks. Ero's emotionally evolving AI brain was overheating.
His neck joint graunched as he turned his gaze to the BioDome roof and surveyed the results of his day’s work. Just five gaskets fitted, each either sagging inadequately or completely hanging free. A pang of negativity filled him. Turning his gaze downwards, he focused on some of the other worker robots far below him. He watched them enviously as they worked at their appointed tasks; hammering, drilling, sawing. To Ero’s mind they seemed to be making good progress – successful and content in their work, each and every one. He was particularly drawn to a constructorbot bashing away at some ducting. As Ero watched, his own cyber-hand made small tapping motions, mirroring the other bot’s more vigorous actions.
Through a doorway to the right came the site foreman bot, Tude (short for Fortitude). Rocking along on his caterpillar tracks, Tude came to a halt at the base of Ero’s tower and craned his neck upwards.
<01010111011000010111001101110011011101010111000000111111> he transmitted in standard robot communications protocol. Which roughly translated as:
Half-heartedly Ero copied the punch and followed it with the rote response of,
Tude nodded his metallo-plastic head and trundled away. Ero watched him go before throwing a wistful glance at the hammering robot, still happily clobbering away at his duct. As he returned to his own, unhappy task, a glimmer of an idea formed in his circuits. Clutching the head of a freshly unwrapped gasket in one hand, the robot activated the screwdriver attachment in the other. With a whirr, the screwdriver blade emerged. He placed the seal against the gap and poked it in with the blade. One end went in. His hopes rose. This might actually work. He fed more and more of the gasket into the gap, pushing it firmly home with the blade until he had just a few millimetres to go. But at that very moment, the whole building seemed to explode with the jarring blare of alarm bells.
Ero jerked in surprise, skewering the rubber seal with the screwdriver and knocking it free of the gap. Once again Ero found himself watching a gasket plummeting to the ground. He continued staring at it for a long time after it had finished its death dance. Yet again he had failed. The robot slumped and cradled his spherical metal head. Despair overwhelmed him. Unable to shoulder the burden of failure any longer, Ero climbed over the scaffold barrier rail, gazed down at the inviting concrete floor, and jumped.
In any case, it was too late for Ero to register their response.
*
The sound of the crash, audible even above the din of the alarms, made foreman bot Tude turn back to see what had happened. At the bottom of the tower lay the crumbled carcass of Ero, resembling a modern sculpture of a break-dancing robot, head partially buried in the still-soft concrete and legs splayed in the air.
In a far corner of Botany Base, Zilli (short for Resilience), bleeped into life, flicked open her Swiss Army hands and set off to carry out her assignment.
*
As the alarm bells continued to ring, the knocking of hammers, sawing of wood and whine of power drills ceased. One by one, the builder robots turned and checked their nearest wall-screen. The message, in flashing red lights, read, ‘Site meeting. Site-office portakabin in 10 minutes. HarVard.’
Each robot stopped its task and set off towards the base’s front entrance. Those with jointed legs had to pick their way through rubble as they went, those on caterpillar tracks were able to trundle over it, while the most advanced models hovered clear of the debris. Inevitably, in all the haste, there were accidents. A couple of robots collided at a corridor junction, resulting in some denting of metal casings, scratching of paintwork and loosening of wires. Another put an arm through a freshly plastered partition.
Things were worse at the main entranceway. With all the bots trying to pile through the small doorway, it wasn’t long before a mass of metal bodies, swivelling heads and twisted limbs had formed a solid plug wedged firmly between the door jambs. And, as the wall-screens counted down the minutes to the site meeting, frantic bots began crawling over the top of their comrades, attempting to squeeze through the gap above their heads and becoming stuck at the top of the pile in the process.
A single camera, mounted high in the dome’s space-frame roof trusses, swung in the direction of the mêlée and seemed to droop despondently. Then a set of commands were pinged to Dom (Wisdom), a multi-purpose robot, who opened a bulldozer arm and swung into action. It took all his strength to shove the mechanical mass away from the opening and into a corner of the entrance hall. He allowed the robots to escape, one by one, until all had passed safely out of the base.
*
Outside, the freed robots bowed their hard-hatted heads into the gusting wind. The small, stocky ones, with rugged undercarriages, made the best progress through the rocky, sandy soil of Mars, whereas the tall, thin, androids struggled a little. A squat floor-polishing bot resembling an upturned pram, called Cassie (Perspicacity), hit a stone that jammed her wheels and caused her to run off the path into a ditch. There she lay, struggling to get out, her wheels spinning in the fine dust of the Martian surface. The other robots ploughed on, ignoring her feeble beeps for assistance.
Up the narrow ramp leading to the ramshackle wooden portakabin they went, digitally chitter-chattering to each other and speculating about the possible reason for this unscheduled meeting. Their progress towards the portakabin door was observed by wall-mounted CCTV cameras. The prospect of a second pile-up occurring at this entrance seemed inevitable, so emergency measures were required. With lightning speed, HarVard transmitted and uploaded a ‘politeness app’ to each of the bots’ positronic brains.
The effect was immediate. The first to reach the site office entrance was a small flue-sweeping bot called Timi (Optimism) who appeared to be built from metal flower pots. He stopped in front of the door, knocked on it and waited for a response. The second robot to arrive, Eve (Achievement), halted right behind him. The next arrival jammed on its brakes and stopped behind her. In no time there was a long, orderly queue from the site office door, down the ramp and stretching into the Martian landscape.
“Come in!” called a voice from within the Portakabin. “Just come straight in!”
But, with the new app installed, Timi turned to Eve and, with a polite bow, transmitted,
The lens of the external camera zoomed in and out in disbelief, and the voice from inside blared out, “Abort the app and get in the site office, now!”
With the new order overriding their politeness modules, the bots obeyed. Timi shoved Eve out of the way and marched into the site office. Behind, an unseemly scramble ensued as robots fought to pile in.
The site office was empty apart from a rickety trestle table in the centre of the room. With much pushing and barging the robots shuffled
around to fill the limited space available. Most removed their safety helmets and their luminous-yellow, high-viz jackets as they entered, hanging them on the hooks provided.
As they jostled their way in, their cyber minds wondered why HarVard had summoned them like this? What could be so important that he needed to address them personally? Surely there was nothing wrong?
6. Fagin It
The large electronic eye, set high in the wall at the front of the site office watched the assorted robots crowding around the trestle table, their excited electronic chatter saturating the airwaves.
The Eye observed them bumping into one another in the cramped confines of the cabin. It watched little Timi get clattered to the ground and trampled on. Another robot rushed to Timi’s assistance, but merely ended up on top of him. And a third tripped over them both, uttering an electronic shriek as it did so.
The super-brain behind the Eye processed what it saw and was overwhelmed by a sweeping sense of despair. I’m better than this, thought HarVard.
But, with important matters at hand, HarVard ramped up his patience circuits and calmed his teeming thought processes as the last of the robots entered the cabin. It was the gasket-fitter bot, Ero, hastily mended and newly-rebooted, but with a nasty dent in his spherical, chrome-plated head. Optics downcast and shoulders slouched, he dragged his hoof-like feet as he followed repair-bot Zilli into the office, leaving the door wide open behind him. The plastic eyelids of the Eye narrowed in annoyance, but HarVard’s primary decision-making module kicked in and concluded: What’s the point? In any case, at that moment, a powerful gust of Martian wind caused the door to slam shut with a loud bang and spurred HarVard into addressing the meeting.
A deathly radio-hush filled the room and the assortment of eclectic cyber-heads swivelled to face the front of the site office.