by Mark Roman
Flint’s gran grinned a toothless grin, staring at the camera. “Am I on’t telly?”
“You are. And the whole world is watching. You must be terribly proud of your grandson.”
Gran continued to stare directly at the camera.
“Mrs Arkwright,” prompted Katie.
“Miss.”
“Sorry ... Miss Arkwright, could you share some of your fond memories of Commander Dugdale?”
“Eeeee, Flint were a bonny babby. He ‘ad such a lovely smile. Oh, wait. ‘Appen that were his ‘alf brother, Leroy, wi’t smile. Now I remember, Flint were t’ugly bugger. He were forever bawlin’ ‘bout summat.”
Katie put her hand to her earpiece again.
“Message?” she said quickly. “What’s your message to your grandson?”
“Fetch us twenty Lambert and Butler, Flint, luv. I’m gaggin’ for a ciggie.” She cackled a toothless laugh at the camera.
Katie fiddled with her earpiece to reduce the volume of her director’s shrill screams. She glanced behind at the huge scrum of people eager for their moment of fame.
Next up was Scudder, eyes glazed, standing far too close to Katie for her liking and swaying alarmingly.
“Ayeup, Fluggdale, mate,” he said, rubbing himself up against the immaculate trouser suit of the aghast reporter. “I chuffin’ well love yer, man. Listen, listen, mate…” Scudder’s drunken eyes tried to focus on the camera. “… Seriously, man, I gotta tell yer summat real important.”
Scudder pushed himself away from Katie, straightened up as though to deliver a heartfelt message, and let out the loudest belch he could muster before collapsing to his knees in raucous laughter. There was laughter from the crowd surrounding the now terror-stricken Katie, and even Flint Dugdale nearly choked on a mouthful of pie as he watched his friend’s performance.
Katie backed away from the mob and, sensing the kill, they lifted the volume up a notch.
“Er, perhaps this young lady has a message?” she asked in desperation, swinging the mike to a woman on her right, all bulging boobs, tattoos, piercings, short skirt, high heels and tarty make-up.
Aleesha was hardly young and most definitely not a lady. She puffed herself up as the camera turned towards her. “Yeah, I do,” she said, grabbing the microphone and holding it up against her heavily lip-sticked mouth. “I got a message for yer, Flinty Fredstone. Remember that night in’t big metal wheely bin at back ert chippy, Mr Loverman?”
Flint’s eyes widened as he watched his ex-girlfriend, a lustful smile playing about his lips. He still had feelings for her – at least, in certain parts of his anatomy. He cast his mind back to that night. It had been their last night together, just before she’d dumped him on account of him shagging her mum. That night, he’d made a real effort. The choice of location might not have been the most romantic, but at least the municipal waste container had been fairly empty and not too smelly. Flint had attentively arranged a bed of bin bags containing soft waste to make sure Aleesha would be comfortable. The pitter-patter of rain drops, dancing on the closed metal lid above them, had added to the atmosphere. He’d even brought along a couple of candles because Scudder had told him ‘Birds luv that sort of shit’. It hadn’t been his fault that someone had chosen to lob their half-eaten doner kebab into the bin at the critical moment.
On screen, Aleesha was holding up a squirming, filthy-faced urchin. “Meet t’sprog yer left me saddled with, yer bastard. Go on Tyrone, say summat to yer friggin’ dad.”
The kid’s top teeth hooked over its bottom lip. “Fu ...” he started, but never got to finish his message.
Behind him a drunken chorus had erupted. “One Flint Dugdale, There’s only one Flint Dugdale, One Flint Dugdale, There’s only one Flint Dugdale,” and so it continued, ever more hoarsely and tunelessly.
Flint clicked the PAUSE button on the remote control and fumbled through his pockets for his mobile phone. With a few finger-strokes he took a photo of the still image on screen. He saved it as a file called Tyrone.jpg and then moved it to a directory marked ‘Sprogs’.
“Cute kid,” he muttered to himself.
8. Something Picky This Way Comes
In the site office HarVard had morphed his hologram avatar into the form of a saint. Not any particular saint, but a generic holy figure with a radiant glow, open arms and a glowing halo over its head. He reckoned he would probably be needing the patience that came as part of the saintly package. “Tude, my son. Perhaps you could inform us how close we are to completion. Any ideas?”
“Percentage completion?” prompted the holy man.
“I think even I can see that.”
Tude sucked in some Martian air through the orifice that served as a pseudo mouth and scratched at his head.
“Really?”
“Hmm.”
<69.>
The saint put his fingertips together. “You see, that presents us with something of a problem.”
Tude swivelled and jerked his head.
“Well, if it’s taken five years to reach 69% completion, by my calculations, it’s going to take another two years, two months and twenty-nine days to finish the base,” explained HarVard. “And the humans arrive tomorrow.”
In an instant, the site office erupted in a wave of cheering and celebration at the news.
HarVard’s saintly image gazed at them with its most forbearing and forgiving expression.
“It goes without saying that we want only the best for our humans. But I don’t feel that 69% completion qualifies as ‘the best’.”
“And what do you think we can achieve in twenty-four hours?”
“That’s straightforward, right?”
HarVard’s avatar, despite its inherent goodliness, was starting to grind its teeth. “OK, what else is urgent?”
“I thought we had water.”
“Explain.”
“Filters not working?”
“Anything else?”
“And?”
“What about the fish?”
There was a long silence from the saint. It stood still with its eyes closed. The robots glanced at one another and shuffled about on the site office floor. Every now and
then they would guiltily glance up at the calendar with its large red circle and the words ‘COMPLETION DATE’ scrawled next to it.
“Alright,” said the saint eventually, opening his eyes. “We need to get those things fixed, Tude. All of them. Maximum priority. All hands on deck. They’ve got to be sorted out by first-light tomorrow.”
The saint sighed and put his palms together, as though in prayer. “There’s another thing you need to know. Quite important. A site inspector is on his way to sign the work off. It’s an InspectaBot 360.”
There was an electronic gasp from all the robots, followed by a deathly hush. One could have heard a pin drop but for the howling wind outside and the distant wails of Cassie, still struggling to get out of her ditch.
“I tried to stall him,” the saint was saying, “but he’s on his way anyway. Should be here within the hour. And you know what a bad report from InspectaBot would mean ... No humans.”
There were cries of horror and groans of disappointment.
“I’d say our chances of getting a good report are approximately ... zero.”
The groans became moans and then wails.
“But don’t forget: I am a supercomputer. And I have a plan. I’ll need a volunteer.”
The rafters squeaked as Dom struggled to signal his willingness.
“It’s OK, Dom. You have enough on your plate already. I’m sure Dura can handle it. The rest of you go and start working. Work, work and work, harder than you have ever done in your lives. For tomorrow, the humans arrive!”
In an instant the mood was lifted, and the robots burst into their usual chorus of cheering.
HarVard waited until he could be heard once more. “Right, Zilli, you go get the Polish robotniki. Without them we’re doomed.”
Zilli made for the exit.
“And Dom, you deal with Cassie ...” The saint stopped, noticing the snagged robot. “Ah, yes. What are we going to do with you?”
Dom’s optics looked more downcast than ever.
“OK, can one of you help release Dom from the ceiling?”
There was a huge clattering of aluminium casings as all robots moved towards Dom to render their assistance.
“I said ONE!” yelled the saint in a most unsaintly tone. Alas, too late. The flimsy floor-panel where Dom was standing collapsed under the additional weight, leaving him suspended from the rafters by his bucket-hands. Panic ensued as several other robots fell through the resulting hole to find themselves standing on Martian soil, their waists at floor level and the wind ripping up into the site office.
“Alright, calm! Let’s have some calm,” ordered the saint, a martyred look on his face. “I’m sure we can sort this one out.”
*
Twenty minutes later, the holed robots had been pulled out of their hole and the hanging robot unhooked from the ceiling. Instead of heading back to Botany Base, they seemed rooted to the spot, alternately looking down at the gaps in the floor-panel and up at the hole in the ceiling.
HarVard’s saintly avatar stared at them. “Well? Get on with it.”
Tude raised an appendage.
HarVard tore at his hair in a most unholy manner. “I don’t mean the portakabin, I mean get on with the Base, you idiots. You’re wasting precious time.”
Tude shrugged and drove out of the site office, shaking his head, followed in slow procession by the others. At the back of the line trudged a dispirited Ero, trailing gaskets from his workbelt. Noting his demeanour HarVard transmitted a ‘positivity app’ to his neural network. Ero’s pace slowed for a second as the software installed and then, with a bounce in his step, he zipped past the others and sped towards the BioDome.
*
After a few more precious minutes had ticked by, HarVard’s avatar was left alone with Dura.
The supercomputer gave a nod before shape-shifting into an arch-villain looking very much like a cross between Dick Dastardly and Terry Thomas.
“This will be trickier than I thought,” said the composite bad-guy. “But here is what we do ...”
9. The Arch of Progress
Ero, still with the skip in his step, returned to the BioDome itching to restart his important gasket-fitting work. The new ‘positivity app’ was proving a real tonic. Jaw jutting with renewed determination, he sporadically punched the air, muttering “Happiness for Homo sapiens”. The heroic humans were coming and finally he would be seeing them in the flesh. What better motivation for finishing his task?
At the base of his scaffold-tower he retrieved all the fallen gaskets from the floor before making the long climb back to the top, the thirty-five rubbery things dangling from his fingers. He even caught himself whistling.
With renewed optimism, and his clever screwdriver technique, he set to fitting the gaskets retrieved from the floor, before continuing with the ones still in the box.
For three hours he toiled and, at the end of that time, one hundred and ninety-eight gaskets sat snugly in their allotted places. Only two remained in the box by his stocky, metallic feet. His whistling had progressed to singing. A look of pride gave his face an extra shine, and he even cast a mocking glance at the hammer-bot far below with its mundane, artless job of bashing in nails. This is real craft, he told himself, surveying his work.
But, as he reached for gasket number one hundred and ninety-nine, he spotted two other objects at the bottom of the box. He picked them out and examined them. One was a small tube labelled: “Glazaffix Gasket Glue™”. The other was a sheet of instructions which read: “IMPORTANT. Gaskets must be securely glued into place using Glazaffix Gasket Glue™ to ensure an airtight seal”.
The horror of his incompetence made him stagger backwards, crashing through the scaffold-tower’s safety barrier and out into thin air. Ero flung his arms out, desperately grabbing at anything that might stop his fall. But his digits merely snapped open and shut as though he were a flying castanet player. Down he plummeted, his optic lenses fixed on the roof that had become his nemesis.
*
He sighed as he approached the twitching gasket fitter. Ero’s head was loose and an arm had broken off. A camera shutter opened and a cracked lens stared up at Tude.
Tude reached down and hauled the battered robot upright. The hammer-bot picked up the severed arm and handed it to Ero.
As Tude motored off in the direction of the site office the gasket fitter limped towards the scaffold-tower, his movement impeded by rear panels that had been flattened on impact. A knee joint screeched as he raised a foot onto the first rung of the ladder. Stay positive, he thought. Must stay positive.
But then his loose head rolled off his neck and dropped to his chest, hanging there from its multi-coloured cables. Better get that gaffer tape, he told himself.
10. The Rovers Return
The winds on Mars are very, very strong. Howling gales and mighty tornadoes gust at over 300 miles per hour which, even by the standards of the Outer Hebrides, is pretty brisk. Few objects manage to stay put for long unless they are nailed to the planet’s bedrock. And, whereas on Earth all roads are said to lead to Rome (with the obvious exception of the Hangar Lane gyratory), on Mars all winds lead to Windy Point Canyon; the breeziest, gustiest, draughtiest place on the whole planet, where pretty much everything eventually finds its way.
Thus, over the years, Windy Point Canyon had accumulated the remnants of Earth’s numerous unmanned missions to Mars and was now a scrapyard of all the robotic rovers that had ever roamed and explored the planet. Bold Vikings and ancient Mariners lay, sand-coated, corroding and defunct, as did the dogged rovers: Spirit, Opportunity, Sojourner and Curiosity – each a mechanical hero of its time. Buckled solar panels and bent antennae had drifted here, caught in bundles of tumble-wire. Wheels and instruments and cameras had rolled and bounced along windy highways until they had entered this electronic cemetery. One unfortunate lander had ended up on its back with all four legs in the air. For ten years the upside down machine had struggled to understand why the Martian surface looked like the sky while the sky was full of red stones. Eventually, as its batteries drained, it gave up worrying, never having solved the mystery. There were even fragments of Britain’s ill-fated Beagle 2 scattered around the canyon floor – although not many and they were difficult to find. In fact, so much of the hardware from Earth had found its way here, it was difficult not to suspect the guiding hand of an intelligent agency.