by Mark Roman
Tude tutted as he scanned the electronic snagging-list for the Gents’ toilet. “Urinals: not fitted. Sink taps: not fitted. Cubicle doors: not fitted. Cubicles: not fitted.” And so it went on. Altogether, eighty-two items on his list had a cross by them, and seven had a tick – something of a landslide victory for the crosses
He scratched his head. Where could he get a quick and easy tick or two?
Item seventy-five caught his attention. “Handsfree,” it read. “Quantity five.” Extensive though his knowledge of fixtures and fittings was, it did not encompass the meaning of this item, so a quick database search was called for. He discovered that the purpose of the handsfree was “to provide gentlemen with the ultimate leak-proof toileting experience.” A picture illustrated its operation.
Once the shudder of disgust had completed its pass through his circuitry, Tude identified the item as a top priority, the words “leak-proof” being the clincher. In the construction industry, leakage – of whatever variety – was to be avoided at all costs.
But a quick inventory check revealed the items to be out of stock, the last batch having gone to the Other Place.
The door opened and Dura poked his head in.
*
A sinking feeling flooded Dura’s electronics as he approached the 3D printer room and saw the queue stretching halfway down the corridor, filled with workers, mini-digger bots and even food processor bots. He rolled his optics as he trudged his way to the back of the line. The sinking feeling worsened as he found his least-favourite builder bot, Len, at the end.
Len lowered his arm.
Dura shuffled on his tracks, checking first his wrist, which had no watch, and then the wall, which had no clock.
Dura responded, electronic hackles rising.
Dura nodded, but then became aware of an e-murmur passing through the line of robots in front of him.
Dura’s positronic network experienced a power surge of purely negative emotions, jealousy being the most significant of them. The very idea of a pretty horticultural bot like Tina having any interest in a dead-leg like Len made his circuits overheat.
At that moment, another murmur rippled along the queue.
The robots in the queue hummed as the messages were processed, and a response returned.
At this, the commotion grew stronger and the currents ran higher. Dura decided enough was enough. Being one of the more senior robots on the base, he pushed his way past the queue and barged into the printer room. Before him was a mêlée of robots surrounding the gasket fitter. They were pushing him this way and that, tugging and tussling and arguing. As Dura tried to find a way through the throng, more robots came in after him, with the room rapidly overcrowding and the tension escalating.
A tiny ‘ping!’ from the printer silenced everyone. All optics swivelled towards the printer’s lid as it rose to reveal a perfectly formed human posterior. They stared at it in silent wonder for several seconds.
Then Dura broke the silence and demanded,
Ero looked from one faceplate to another, searching for any that might show the merest hint of sympathy.
The other robots exchanged quick-fire messages.
The robots continued to stare.
One of them asked the question that was in all their transistors.
But then their attention swivelled to a separate commotion that had been brewing next to the printer and now turned ugly.
It was at that moment that Mission Commander Flint Dugdale happened to be passing the printer room. He had just been to pick up his newly tailored, and correctly dimensioned, clothes and was returning to his darts match when the fighting robots spilled out into the corridor and knocked him off balance.
Dugdale adjusted his footing and stared in disbelief at the mechanical mayhem filling the printer room. But as he watched the blows raining in, long dormant memories stirred in his brain. The f
eel and sound and smell of the battles of his youth came drifting back to him. He recalled skirmishes on football terraces, brawls in pubs and punch-ups on seafronts. Bruises, bloody noses and broken bones. Good times.
Years and years as a devoted Leeds United supporter had taught him how to deal with conflict situations. His breathing intensified, and the veins on the side of his neck throbbed with increased blood-flow. He bent down to make sure the laces of his brand-new, twenty-eyelet, size ten, Doctor Marten boots were securely tensioned. He stood up, 6’ 4” of pure hooligan, slightly stooped on account of the low ceiling, and felt himself once more getting in touch with his inner thug. For the first time since he’d arrived on Mars a smile crept across his ugly face. At last, he thought, some fun.
Ducking low to get in through the undersized doorway he charged; twenty-three stones of blubber accelerating towards the closest of the robotic scuffles. His mind echoed with his favourite hooligan chant: You’re goin’ t’get yer ‘ed kicked in!
His first punch floored a tiling-bot. His second sent a carpentry robot shooting across the room. And then, with agility belying his weight and total lack of fitness, he swung his left steel-toed Doc Marten at brickie-bot Rab (Venerability). With the reflexes of a cat, Rab dodged the kick. For, sometime previously, Rab had installed a Bruce Lee software patch he’d illegally downloaded from one of the robotniki. He was not just a brickie-bot, but a Kung Fu fighting brickie-bot.
Sensing something important was about to happen, the other robots stopped fighting and formed a circle around the brave robot who had dared to challenge a human. And, worse still, the leader of the humans.
Rab’s concertina arms began waving, in the style of a martial arts master, and he danced and prowled around the stationary human, making strange monkey noises. Occasionally he would stop and flick a mechanical foot in Flint’s direction, feigning a kick and testing for a reaction. None came. The Commander stood like a statue, carefully studying his adversary’s posturing. Suddenly Flint snapped into full Kung Fu pose and bowed slowly in the direction of Rab, as if accepting the challenge. In the time-honoured tradition of the Shaolin priest, the robot halted his circling and gave an impressively honourable and very low bow in return. Seizing the moment, Flint swung an almighty kick at Rab’s head, knocking it clean off his metal shoulders and sending it spinning toward the ceiling where it wedged in an overhead air supply vent. Crossed-eyed with shock and confusion, the decapitated mechanical head managed a few blinks before its lights went out.
“Back ert net!” Dugdale roared, punching a fist into the air.
A deadly hush fell through the room as they viewed the sorry sight of Rab’s lifeless head, and back to Dugdale, gloating and strutting, moobs a-wobble, chanting, “Who’s the daddy?”
The robots scrammed from the room. In their urgency the tail-enders became jammed in the doorway, but a few helpful swings of Dugdale’s boots, with entreaties of “Gerr’outta ‘ere”, helped them along their way.
Only poor Rab’s decapitated body remained.
18. Nothing Like a Nice Cup of Tea
HarVard had adopted the guise of a wise old grandfather who was in desperate need of a good haircut and beard trim. By sheer coincidence his unkempt grandfatherly appearance made him look a bit like the great wizard, Gandalf. He shook his head mournfully. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Tude and Dura glanced at one another.
Grandad Alf raised his head and looked at them. “Courage will now be your best defence against the storm.”
“Sorry,” said Grandad Alf. “Miles away. However, what I say is true. Trouble is afoot.”
Tude flicked his appendages.
“No, no, no. Much worse than a mere seepage of excess water. The Leader from The Other Place is heading this way.”
Both robots stepped back a pace in electronic shock.
Grandad Alf nodded in a grave manner.
“Indeed, that is the problem,” agreed Grandad Alf.
“It would never work. He’d see you through the windows,” sighed Grandad Alf.
“You know how noisy humans are Tude. And you’d never get them to keep still.”
“No, no, no, no. Don’t be ridiculous,” said Grandad Alf waving his staff at them. “Why must you always come up with such ludicrous suggestions?”
The two robots hung their heads and scuffed the concrete floor.
“Hard to say. I fear the worst, though. It has been said that if humans should ever encounter a truly advanced alien species the culture shock could destroy them.”
Tude and Dura exchanged glances again.
“I agree we’re not dealing with an advanced alien species here,” said Grandad Alf. “But I fear the reverse effect. A kind of inverse culture shock – which could be just as devastating.”
“Let me try to explain with an analogy. Imagine you’re a Wimbledon tennis champion. You’re on Centre Court, with your tennis gear and your perfectly strung rackets, raring to go. And along comes some amateur from the crowd, wearing jeans and holding an ancient wooden racket with a dodgy grip. Now imagine that this amateur thrashes you in straight sets? How would that make you feel?”
Tude and Dura stared as they struggled to adopt the mental role that had been mapped out for them. “Well, that’s what it’s going to be like for our humans!” concluded Grandad Alf. “And that’s why I fear for them. Humans are very fragile creatures. This could send them over the edge into madness.”
“We must prepare them for the shock they are about to experience. Steel them in some way.”
Grandad Alf stroked his beard in thought. “I have heard that the British have a panacea for all traumas. Gives them strength and solves all problems.”
“A nice cup of tea.” The wizard lookalike was suddenly animated. “That’s it! I will get Little Urn to go and serve them all a nice cup of tea. Must hurry. We have no time to waste. The Leader is nearly here ...”
*
Having received his orders for his important Mission, Urn (Taciturnity) snapped the hose connector onto his right nipple and turned on the tap to fill his hollow base unit with water for tea making. Not having any milk, nor sugar, nor, indeed, any tea, Urn was having to improvise his ingredients as best he could. For tea leaves he was employing the dried tips of Poa annua, or meadow grass, a common weed running riot in the BioDome which the horticultural bots had been struggling to control from Day 1. For sugar he was using silica crystals, easily extracted from Martian desert sand; insoluble, but harmless unless swallowed. And for milk he was using the sap of the BioDome’s euphorbias, a highly toxic substance, even in small quantities.
With the water unit full, Urn switched on the heater and headed towards the Reception Room, whistling a cheerful tune.
Some of
the humans were already there when he arrived. They seemed inordinately pleased to see him. There is, after all, nothing like a nice cup of tea. And that was precisely what he was offering.
*
Tude and Dura watched the Reception Room images on the large wall screen of HarVard’s super-computing room. They saw Little Urn’s arrival and the joyful reaction it produced in the humans. They watched the first teas being made, some with milk, some with sugar, some with milk and sugar, and some black with no sugar.
Grandad Alf and his two companions focused on the human faces as they took their first sips. The reactions were pretty consistent. There’d be the smile preceding the first eager taste, a slight twitch of the nostrils at the odd smell, the initial inverted twist of the mouth, the emergence of the tongue and facial grimace, the spitting and the rubbing of the mouth and tongue, followed by the running out of the room, possibly for water or some other remedy.
It wasn’t long before Little Urn was left alone in the Reception Room, roaming aimlessly as though wondering what to do.
Dura turned to Grandad Alf.
19. The Old Man and the Tea
Flint, back in the Food Store playing darts with his two new friends, was too focused on the game to go for tea or worry about the rumbling in his stomach. But his game was about to be cut short. The front doorbell of Botany Base, a deep and sonorous chime like that of Big Ben, rang.
In an instant, Stan and Olli dropped the darts and shot off, without so much as a backward glance. On the way, Olli grabbed the Food Store’s last remaining food item – the jar of gherkins – before zooming out of the door.
Annoyed at the abandoned game, Dugdale followed the two speeding robots down the hall, to the right and finally to the entrance hall. There, gathered around the airlock door, was a huge collection of robots, bobbing and bouncing and waving excited limbs. It was as though the doorbell had drawn every builder bot in the building to the entrance for some great robot happening.