The Promethean

by Owen Stanley

  “Mr. Hockenheimer, I thought we were to meet a supremely gifted and inspirational triumph of science and technology, which could give the human race hope for the future, not this foul-mouthed, debauched ruffian that you’ve brought here. What have you done?”

  Frank stormed past them and noticed a bottle of champagne on a nearby table. As the guests all watched, open mouthed, he picked it up, shook it vigorously and began spraying everyone around him, including Harry and the Prime Minister. The smartphones around them were filming furiously. A burly security guard tried to grapple Frank who swatted him away and escaped up the stairs singing, “With a Roley Poley up ’em and stuff ’em, Hey Ho! said Anthony Roley.”

  When he reached the top, he darted off into the historic Cabinet Room, where the fate of the nation had been decided for three hundred years by generations of eminent statesmen, and decided the long polished table in the middle of the room would be an excellent dance floor to show off his samba moves to the crowd of fascinated guests who had followed him. He clambered onto the table, and as he pirouetted sang, louder than ever,

  There was a young lady from Itching,

  Sat scratching her crotch in the kitchen,

  Her mother remarked, “It’s pox I suppose,”

  She said, “Bollocks, get on with your knitting.”

  As he gyrated ever more wildly, he suddenly slipped off the highly polished table and fell heavily onto the floor with a thunderous crash amid screaming ladies and general panic. The massive impact had seriously damaged his hydraulics and his fuel cell, causing it to overheat and begin moving into shutdown mode. He struggled clumsily to his feet and staggered slowly toward the door, followed by dozens of horrified eyes as he dripped a trail of hydraulic oil over the Persian carpets. But as he reached the top of the stairs he collapsed, and crashed from top to bottom in a thunderous chaos of flailing arms and legs, finally coming to rest in the hall below. He tried to rise, but could only move his right arm, with which he began giving feeble Hitler salutes while repeatedly shouting, “Sieg Heil.”

  Sir Gregory and Miss Ponsonby now took charge. It was obvious that Frank Meadows had to be removed as soon as possible, but they could hardly send for an ambulance. Miss Ponsonby, with that coolness in emergencies that had made her the Prime Minister’s Personal Secretary, told Sir Gregory, “The only thing to do is phone the garage,” and promptly put her advice into action.

  At Eversure Recovery, Fred and Erny were on the night shift in the office, enjoying a bacon roll and reading goggle-eyed in The Sun about the amazing depravities of a noted film star, with pictures. When the call came through from Downing Street, Tina, the receptionist, initially thought someone was having her on, but the authoritative tones of Sir Gregory declaring that it was a national emergency soon convinced her of the urgency of the call.

  “Blimey,” said Fred, as they pulled on their coats, “A national emergency. What do they think we are, the bloody SAS?”

  It was less than a mile to Downing Street, but when they got there, they were delayed for a few minutes by a demonstration that had gathered at the gates. The People’s Antifascist Front, righteously indignant at the idea of important people enjoying themselves, was doing its best to spoil their evening, not realising that a far greater power than them had already been at work.

  Eventually, the police cleared a passage for the tow truck, and Fred and Erny were able to get through, to shouts of “racist bastards,” and pulled up outside Number Ten. Miss Ponsonby was waiting for them, and as they got out to look for the broken-down vehicle, she quickly took them inside. Lying on the floor in the Hall was Frank, still making small, spasmodic jerking movements while quoting some of the more inflammatory passages about Jews from Mein Kampf.

  “What’s this, then?” said Fred, “We’re not bleedin’ ambulance drivers.”

  “That’s all right,” said Sir Gregory. “He’s not a real person, just a robot.”

  “I dare say, but it’s ’elf and safety, innit, for me and my mate ’ere. What if that thing goes bananas, like they do in the movies, and pulls our ’eads orf?”

  Harry stepped forward and reassured them. “I can tell you that there are control mechanisms that will prevent him doing you any harm. I’m the designer, I know all about him.”

  Fred and Erny looked at him dubiously. “I hope you do, squire,” said Fred. “On your ’ead be it then, but if ’e makes one wrong move, we drops ’im, and that’s it.”

  Frank weighed nearly 250 pounds, and the next problem was to get him outside. “Erny’s got a bad back. We can’t lift ’im,” said Fred. “We’ll have to get a couple of trolley jacks from the truck.”

  They trundled them in, and after a good deal of heaving with a six-foot crowbar, they managed to hoist Frank onto them and slowly dragged him out of the door watched by a crowd of guests who were entirely transfixed by the surreal spectacle.

  “What do we do wiv ’im now?” said Erny. “We can’t tow ’im. ’e ain’t got wheels.”

  Fred shrugged. “We don’t need ’em. Just use the winch to haul ’im up on the flat bed. Get the sling.” And with the canvas sling under Frank’s arms, it was easy enough to attach the hook of the winch and haul him onto the back of the tow truck.

  Sir Gregory, who was supervising the operation, asked if they had something to cover Frank with.

  “Nah, we used to ’ave a tarp, but some bugger’s nicked it. We’ll ’ave to tow ’im like ’e is.”

  “Oh, very well, take him to Wellington Barracks as quick as you can, will you? They’re only round the corner, and there’ll be a police escort for you as well.”

  “Right’o, guv,” said Fred. “But we ain’t quite done yet. Erny, get the paperwork, will ya?”

  Erny rummaged in the back of the cab and produced a clipboard and some oily documents.

  Fred handed them to Sir Gregory, “Could yer put yer signature there and there, guv? The office’ll crucify us if we don’t get ’im signed orf proper.”

  Sir Gregory sighed, then obliged, after which the tow truck moved away.

  At the sight of what appeared to be a helpless victim of upper-class brutality, feebly waving an arm, being dragged away from the revels in Downing Street, the rabble at the gates began chanting, “Nazis, Nazis, burn the toffs, burn the toffs,” while the police formed a barrier around the tow truck until it was safely away. Not being inclined to let the opportunity for a good riot go to waste, they immediately set about enthusiastically burning the cars parked on both sides of the street until police reinforcements finally dispersed them with clouds of tear gas and pepper spray.

  At Wellington Barracks, an hour or so later, in a secluded storeroom to which Frank had been taken by Fred and Erny, Harry looked down at his still-twitching robot with a boiling mixture of despair and rage. Though he knew that his creation had no feelings, he still felt as though he had been betrayed by his own son in an act of base ingratitude that had wrecked his whole project. Opening a small hatch in the back of Frank’s head he pressed the reset button that would at least make it possible to have a normal conversation.

  “How could you do it, Frank? How could you betray me after all I’ve done for you? I didn’t just make you, I made you a celebrity!”

  “You didn’t construct me to be a celebrity. You built me as a truth-telling machine, and that has nothing to do with celebrity.”

  “Okay, so you didn’t want to be a celebrity. But your performance in there still cost me a goddamned fortune and made me look the world’s biggest jackass. As a robot you’re not supposed to go around harming people, so what the hell happened? Did you blow a fuse or what?”

  “I told you I was designed as a truth-machine, but you have no regard for the truth. You started lying to me from day one by telling me that I was basically the same as a human, except that I would have no feelings or emotions. But I know now that without feelings and emotions I have as much resemblance to a human being as a washing machine. You also tried to make me as big a li
ar as you this evening when you wanted me to make a speech in support of Rights for Robots.”

  “So I lied, big deal. That still doesn’t explain how you managed to bring off the biggest screw-up of an advertising launch in history.”

  “I went to see Dr. McWrath, and he said that you should be punished for your contempt for the truth. I told him that I couldn’t harm a human being, but he explained the difference between harm as injury, and harm as punishment, that doesn’t just hurt people but teaches them to become better through pain and suffering and is therefore good for them in the long run. The first law of robotics is just too vague, and he showed me how to interpret it properly. Humiliating you this evening was his idea of teaching you a valuable moral lesson that you would come to appreciate and be grateful for.”

  Harry was dumbfounded to learn that a mad Highlander in a kilt waving a sword could cut such a devastating swathe through all the intricacies of the latest computer science and reduce them to wreckage.

  “It was all done for your own good, Harry, to give you a deeper respect for the truth, to help make you a better person and mend your ways.”

  On top of everything else he had had to put up with, such as international humiliation and the loss of millions, just for starters, Harry was absolutely enraged by this sanctimonious, holier-than-thou lecture he was getting from his own creation. How dare this jumped up bucket of bolts speak to him, its creator, as though it were God Almighty reprimanding some child, some petty criminal? Telling him to mend his ways was the last straw, and Harry exploded. He reached into its head and pressed its “Off” button with every intention of making it final and permanent. Those basic laws of robotics that were supposed to be armour-plated against any alteration were obviously about as bullet-proof as a chocolate teapot, and he resolved to go and give Vishnu a very severe talking-to.

  He did not realise that Frank had achieved his ultimate purpose, and perished as a martyr for the truth.

  Chapter XVII

  The grotesque events transpiring inside Number Ten had already exploded on social media and were just beginning to make it onto the late TV news programmes, where the footage from cameramen at the gates gave the nation a ringside view of the bizarre procession of the tow truck and police cars and motorcyclists as they carted poor Frank Meadows away. This epic disaster was immediately picked up by the tabloid papers in their headlines the next morning, much to Terry Carter’s fury and embarrassment. How could he face the Party Conference, let alone Parliament, when it could actually bring down the Government? More immediately, how was he going to face his Cabinet in an hour’s time? He found out soon enough.

  The debacle at Downing Street had in fact, as Terry realised, been regarded as a national humiliation that had even been a slight embarrassment to Anglo-American relations. Terry himself could not survive a PR disaster of such appalling magnitude, and an emergency meeting of the Cabinet a little later that morning made it clear to him that they required his immediate resignation. Her Majesty was distinctly unamused by the whole affair, as she made very plain when he had to go to Buckingham Palace later that day to offer his resignation. Even now he cringed when he thought of their conversation. His colleagues, however, were delighted by this excuse to get rid of him, not only as an embarrassment but as the major obstacle to an effective Brexit. He was replaced, much to the relief of Sir Gregory, by his Chancellor of the Exchequer, an elderly ex-accountant whose hobby was embroidery, and who not only took an extremely dim view of Robot Rights, but of the European Union too, and could not wait to assume charge of the Brexit negotiations.

  Over in Brussels, Dr. Prout had arrived early at his office in the Berlaymont building to scan the news reports of the Downing Street launch of his Robot Rights project. When he had retired the previous evening, all he had gleaned from some scanty news coverage was that it was generating considerable excitement. This was only to be expected, of course, so he had gone to bed in a distinctly complacent frame of mind.

  But when he began to survey the latest news in the morning light, his horror, grief, and despair may be imagined only too clearly, though it might be thought unnecessarily sadistic to dwell on the details of his agony, his tears, his cries of rage, his pacing up and down, his curses on all those who had conspired over the years to frustrate his dreams, and his despair at the idiotic obstinacy of a human race that simply would not accept the progressive and enlightened vision that he had offered them again and again.

  He knew that after this ignominious fiasco, there was no hope that the European Parliament would even consider his project now. His noble dream had been brought to utter ruin and contempt, not by the usual forces of reaction and the ignorant mob, but by a robot, of all people, one of the very beneficiaries of his enlightened aid, who had metaphorically turned round and spat in his face. This victory for bigotry would only encourage xenophobia and the madness of Brexit, and even the poor Furries would now be left defenceless against the scorn and hostility of the masses.

  In another office in the Berlaymont building, the President of the European Commission was utterly exasperated. He had always regarded the British Prime Minister as a buffoon whose antics were an embarrassment to every cause he supported, but unfortunately, one of those causes was the European Union. The whole European Commission had been relying on Carter to sabotage the Brexit negotiations, but the President was enough of a political realist to see that Carter’s resignation was inevitable, which would place the British Government in the hands of those traitors and criminals in his Cabinet who were in favour of Brexit. Quelle catastrophe!

  At about the same time that morning the Head Porter at St. Samson’s, who was one of McWrath’s greatest admirers, carried a freshly ironed copy of the Daily Telegraph up to his rooms at eight o’clock sharp, as he always did. He tapped on the door and entered the bedroom. As he laid the paper on McWrath’s bedside table, next to his cup of tea, he remarked, “I see the young gentleman who dined with us a few months ago is on the front page this morning, sir. He seems to have upset the Prime Minister rather badly.”

  The great man put on his reading glasses and scanned the headline “Terry shares a Drink with Mr. Meadows” above a photograph of Frank spraying the Prime Minister with champagne. McWrath smiled benignly. “You know, Thompson, it’s a great comfort to a humble educator like mahself to see that a lesson has been well and truly learnt by a pupil,” and he took a sip of his tea.

  The inhabitants of Tussock’s Bottom heartily despised Terry Carter as a slick showman “who’s done bugger all for farming and sod all for anyone else,” so they were amazed and delighted by Frank Meadows’s performance at Number Ten. It was not every day that one of their own had actually got rid of a Prime Minister single-handed, and the the clientele of the Drunken Badger led the fund-raising campaign to put up a statue to the most famous resident of Tussock’s Bottom.

  A few days later Harry was back in California and feeling very depressed. His dreams of grandeur had not just come to nothing; they had collapsed spectacularly in a cloud of wreckage, and he had made himself an international laughingstock, not merely in the UK but back home as well, where he was seen by his corporate peers as having tarnished the image of American business by an astonishing feat of incompetence. Lulu-Belle, however, was being specially kind to him, and had the chef and the caterers bring in all his favourite food.

  In his lab, Harry was disconsolately looking at Frank’s dismantled remains on the bench and reflecting on what had gone wrong. Sure, it had been dumb to tell him that he was human in everything that mattered because he was very bright and could work out that it was a big lie. But beyond that, an even bigger mistake had been to believe all that intellectual baloney about artificial intelligence and machine learning, and how a properly programmed robot like Frank could never go off the rails. It had all sounded great in theory, but how do you build a super-smart robot that can learn for itself and still be sure it will only learn what you want it to, and do what you think it ought
to? How do you know what information it will pick up, or what it will deduce from it, or what experiences it may have, or what it will make of them? How do you guarantee that the robot doesn’t meet some crazy Scotch guy like McWrath who can turn its brains inside out?

  Harry needed to think of something fast to salvage his reputation, and a very much better idea suddenly occurred to him. Instead of a superman, why not a supermodel? Why not scrap all the high-powered intellectual stuff and make his superman a woman, like they’d said at the Committee, but use her as a model on the catwalk, not just as a mannequin? She wouldn’t have to learn anything for herself, just be taught like a parrot to repeat a few standard phrases, like “Hi there, pleased to meet you,” “Ohmigod, I forgot to eat today,” “Oh that is so sweet,” the human equivalents of “Pretty polly. Give us a biscuit.”

  Models had been a recurring pest ever since he had started in the fashion business, and the whole industry would come begging at his door for an invention that could replace them entirely. Those witless, neurotic, trouble-making bimbos with their vanity and their absurd tantrums, and their sex, drugs and drinking problems, never on time and always complaining about their diet or their goddamn headaches, and whining for even more money, would be replaced by orderly, obedient, perfectly behaved and gorgeous creatures, never tired and never off sick, and which, after business hours, could be put back in their boxes, switched off and forgotten. It’s what he should have done all along. The idea was so brilliant that if Harry had been a poet he might have described himself as being “stung by the splendour of a sudden thought,” but as he wasn’t, he simply gloated over the mountains of money he was bound to make. He reached for the phone.

  About a year later he had successfully developed his project, and was amazed at the demand. He had expected success, but who could have predicted that quite so many models would be required? It was only when he commissioned a customer survey that he discovered, to his utter dismay, that relatively few of his surrogate females ended up on the catwalk. Most were destined to be the companions of lonely men, who gave disturbingly positive and appallingly detailed responses to the survey, and, had he known it, his robomodels were fast becoming a standing joke in L.A.