Out to Launch

by Colin Thompson

  ‘Well, I only used matches,’ Apricot explained. ‘I didn’t use petrol or anything like that, so the fire was bound to go out before it proved fatal.’

  ‘Some of those nylon things can go up in a flash.’

  ‘Oh, I know,’ said Apricot, ‘and that’s why I only set fire to pure wool. And to make sure no-one would die, I always sniffed them out first – if they smelled of wee, I knew they’d be too damp to burn badly.’32

  ‘You are so wicked,’ Fiona said, laughing.

  ‘I know, but it was such fun.’

  ‘You are going to be the perfect granny for our show,’ said Fiona.

  She explained that Apricot would have a secret two-way radio to keep in touch with her and Radius, and that although the TV program itself would be live around the whole world, the cameras, which would be everywhere, would be filming twenty-four seven.

  ‘We want you to keep your eyes open for any opportunity to make things more interesting and exciting. Dangerous is fine, but not life-threatening. You’ll have one ally up there – the robot. He’ll help you.’

  ‘OK,’ said Granny Apricot.

  Because all this was so far away from being a tea lady, it took a bit of getting used to. In fact, Granny Apricot decided that she would probably never get used to it. The Fiona lady seemed OK, but her boss was another story. Apricot could tell that he would be totally unscrupulous. Radius Limpfast was famous for being a mercenary, an arrogant dictator with no conscience at all. But the thing was, everyone loved his TV programs. They were incredibly addictive. So if the occasional contestant got slightly broken or dead, they could overlook it. There would always be a perfectly good explanation, which everyone was only too happy to believe.

  So Apricot figured that as long as she was getting her new, very large monthly pay cheque, she was going to go along with whatever they wanted. And if that didn’t work out, well, hey, she’d got a lot of new clothes out of it – some she actually liked and some that would fetch a good price on eBay.

  At the end of the afternoon, Fiona bought some big luxury suitcases, in which she packed all of Granny Apricot’s shopping, and together they took a taxi to Apricot’s house, where they collected a few things and turned off the gas. They drove back to the TV station and boarded the helicopter, which took them down to the country to meet Apricot’s new ‘family’ – the Contrasts.

  Crumley the dog came from a long line of feral mongrels. His mother and father and their parents before them had all been mongrels and had been so for more generations than anyone could discover. When the Contrasts had rescued him from the animal shelter as a puppy, his paperwork said he was a labradoodanielterrierhound cross, which was a pretentious, dishonest word for a mongrel.

  Crumley looked a bit like a spaniel that had been dragged backwards through a hedge, fallen into a muddy puddle and crossed with a giant furball. It was impossible to tell where his actual body ended and his fur began. Sometimes it was difficult to tell exactly where his eyes were, and his tail, which never stopped wagging with pure happiness, was a permanent blur.

  I are a mongrel, Crumley said to himself, and proud of it. I will eat poo and I will pee up old people’s legs. I are a happy boy.

  And Crumley was happy. He loved his family and they loved him. He had more than three red rubber balls, a comfy bed in every room and there were no cats about.

  And wherever he went, as long as some of his humans were there, he thought it was the best place in the world and wanted to be nowhere else.

  With one exception: the bathtub.

  Stark had tried to give him a bath once. He had coaxed Crumley upstairs and into the bathroom and had shut the door before the poor dog realised what was supposed to happen next. Stark picked Crumley up and lowered him into the bathtub, which was full of nice, warm soapy water.

  As if by magic, Crumley instantly became about ten times bigger and grew six more legs. At least, it seemed that way. The bathtub was much too small for Crumley and all the water to fit in at the same time. Lots of water leapt out, and then Crumley did too. Even though the door was shut, the water managed to escape.

  ‘Who knew there were so many gaps in between the floor tiles?’ Laura said, as it began to rain downstairs in the kitchen.

  And then suddenly:

  1. Crumley threw himself at the bathroom door.

  2. Stark slipped on the bathmat and went crashing against the door.

  3. There was a lot of banging, swearing and shouting.

  4. The door came off the hinges and shot down the stairs like a surfboard being ridden by Crumley and Stark.

  5. Crumley shot out of the back door into the garden and threw himself into a huge pile of fresh horse poo that had been delivered that morning for Stark to dig into the veggie garden.

  6. Stark lay at the bottom of the stairs, soaked through and covered in bruises.

  7. Stark continued to lie there waiting for Laura to come and comfort him.

  8. Laura, also soaked through, stormed out of the kitchen and shouted at Stark for being so clumsy.

  9. Crumley ran back into the house with his new coat of horse poo, rushed upstairs and leapt onto his mum and dad’s bed, so Stark had to drag Crumley outside and wash him off with the hose, then the two of them went down to the bottom of the garden and sat in the dog house, which was a tight fit because it was designed to fit only a medium-sized dog and not a medium-sized dog plus a human.

  It was dark and past dinnertime by the time Laura and the kids had got the house back to normal and Stark and Crumley were allowed inside.

  Wow, that was fun, Crumley had said to himself.

  Meanwhile, at a very, extremely top-secret location,33 a small team of Amazingly Brilliant Experienced Top-Secret Scientists – who were actually much, much cheaper students who hoped one day in the future to become Amazingly Brilliant Scientists – was building the robot that was to go to the moon with the Contrasts and look after all the equipment and technology, especially the TV system that would beam everything back to Earth.34 It would also be the robot’s responsibility to make sure the humans always had enough oxygen, food and water to stay alive.

  While he didn’t want to waste money, this was one part of the project that Radius decided would not be done on the cheap. After all, the robot would be the main control and link that the studio on Earth would have with their moon colony. No matter what happened, the robot would be able to sort it out using its own artificial intelligence, without having to rely on any help from Earth.

  ‘Though, of course,’ Radius had told the scientists, ‘the same rules apply to this as they do to MUD and BUMPS. As in, any cost savings you make will earn you a bonus.’35

  Radius decided that the robot was so important that Radius would have his own brain copied onto a massively powerful, very, very small super-computer, which would then be planted inside the robot’s head and become part of its electronic brain. The idea was that the robot would think and act in exactly the same way Radius would. It would be as though Radius himself was up there on the moon.

  ‘That’s brilliant, RR,’ said Fiona.

  ‘Maybe we should copy your brain too,’ said Radius. ‘After all, they do say two heads are better than one.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Fiona, putting her hand lightly on Radius’s shoulder. ‘That would be amazing.’

  Of course, what they’d both overlooked was that the robot would have its own artificial intelligence, next to the copies of the two human brains. So this would mean it’d have three brains, not two, which could lead to all sorts of problems. The Amazingly Brilliant Experienced Top-Secret Scientists realised this, but they also realised that Radius Limpfast was not the sort of person you point out his mistakes to, so they said nothing and did exactly what their boss had asked.

  The robot was called rRego, which was a combination of ‘RR’ and ‘ego’, though the scientists told their boss it stood for rRobot Extraterrestrial Group Operative.

  ‘Brilliant,’ said Radius. ‘I like the
“go” at the end. Sounds cool and dynamic.’

  Idiot, thought the small team of Amazingly Brilliant Experienced Top-Secret Scientists, but they said nothing.

  Students they may have been, but they each had white laboratory coats that made them quite clever because of the chemicals in the cheap washing powder used to clean the coats that leached into their bodies.

  Idiot, thought the robot who didn’t need a white coat, which wasn’t surprising considering its own brain was at least a hundred times more intelligent than Radius’s and Fiona’s brains combined.

  ‘Right, listen up, you two,’ rRego said to the feeble brain copies inside his head. ‘You are wasting valuable space, so let’s get things clear right from the start. One peep out of either of you and I will reprogram you with the brain and personality of a Belgian septic tank cleaner’s assistant. And don’t even think about trying to contact either of your humans. I will look after all that. Understood?’

  The two brain clones said that they did understand, but rRego knew he couldn’t trust them, so he changed them anyway just to be sure. After a few hours of the two brain copies arguing over which was the best sort of brush for cleaning out the crusty bits of poo that always seemed to get stuck in the bends eventually causing a blockage in a toilet, rRego switched them off altogether.

  I can always turn them back on again if the toilets get blocked, rRego said to himself.

  rRego decided that he would report to Radius and Fiona in perfect copies of their own voices so that neither of them would ever suspect a thing.

  To stop him from frightening small children who might be watching the program, rRego was dressed in clown pants and given a red clown nose. The robot was also about the size of a spaniel, which is a comforting, reassuring size. Radius had thought this was a cool idea because it would make everyone relaxed and trusting. Clowns, even weird-looking robot clowns like rRego, were always fun and nice. But the robot looked so ridiculous that it made everyone who saw him start laughing, except for small children, who were terrified and would burst into tears.

  ‘Listen, guys,’ rRego said to his builders, ‘I’m emailing you the plans for some anti-gravity shoes to stop me from floating off into space whenever I go outside, as well as a few other things I’d like you to make for me that we don’t need to tell anyone else about. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said one of the Amazingly Brilliant Experienced Top-Secret Scientists. ‘But aren’t the human brain copies inside your head programmed to report everything back to RR?’

  ‘Not anymore,’ said rRego, speaking in a perfect impersonation of Radius.

  ‘Nice one,’ said the scientists.

  ‘Yeah,’ said rRego. ‘RoboRadius, as I like to call him, will tell RealRadius that you are doing a brilliant job. I’ve also reprogrammed your costs. RealRadius will be seriously impressed with your genius, and super-double impressed with how cheaply you made everything. You will all be in for big bonuses.’

  The scientists were so happy that they gave rRego diamonds on the soles of his shoes and a graphene toggle.36 Then they took him to another top-secret location called Moon Launch Central, which was a big square of flat lawn behind Radius Limpfast’s country house. Actually, they took him to the ballroom at the back of the house, which looked out on Moon Launch Central, and sat him on the windowsill where he could watch a crack team of very cheap engineers attempt to join the bits of the BUMP spaceship together. The bits had arrived in lots of boxes from their top-secret location and were now lying all over the grass while the engineers walked around scratching their heads with screwdrivers.37

  It’ll end in tears and tears – meaning weeping and getting torn, said rRego to himself. It’ll be a miracle if the ship gets off the ground, never mind makes it to the moon.

  But it’s amazing what can be done when you turn the assembly instructions the right way up, cover things in brand new shiny cooking foil and use a lot of gaffer tape. It’s even more amazing when some of that cooking foil is second-hand and has bits of burnt bacon stuck to it.

  At the end of the day, as the sun set over the trees, its fantastic light making the cooking foil shine like gold, the spaceship was sort of complete, apart from a few last-minute extremely important things. But it did look wonderful. Wonderful enough for Limpfast TV’s camera crew to film it.

  ‘It’s getting a bit dark, chief,’ said the cameraman. ‘Maybe we should wait till morning.’

  ‘Not likely,’ said the producer. ‘First, the ship looks fantastic in the twilight, and second, it looks way better now than it will look in the harsh light of morning.’

  ‘And third,’ he whispered into the cameraman’s ear, ‘it wouldn’t surprise me if the entire thing fell to bits or caught fire overnight.’

  It didn’t, though at 3.27 in the pitch dark of night, a family of rats climbed up one of the legs, ate their way through the foil and cardboard, and set up home behind the BUMP’s main control panel.

  I saw that, said rRego to himself as he sat watching from the window sill. I suppose I should tell someone.

  Or not.

  rRego (rRobot Extraterrestrial Group Operative) the robot was more than the sum of his parts, which is to say that as soon as he had been plugged into the power socket and begun to charge his batteries, he took on a life of his own, far greater than the Amazingly Brilliant Scientists, his designers, had planned – and his designers were the best there were in the field of robotics apart from the ones that were paid well.

  rRego quickly realised that there had been some corner-cutting in his manufacture, so the first thing he did was sort that out. It wasn’t difficult.

  When rRego had been left sitting in the dark on the laboratory bench overnight while his batteries reached their full charge he’d added bits to his arms so he could reach anything he needed. Then he made himself two more arms, fitted a telescopic extension to his neck and upgraded his RAM (Random Access Memory).

  When the student scientists arrived at work the next morning, each of them assumed that one of them had added the new bits to rRego. And because the new bits were so good, no-one wanted to admit it hadn’t been them.

  Every morning there were improvements until the day came when the students admitted to each other that they hadn’t the faintest idea what the latest addition was and that none of them had created it.

  At that point, rRego had decided to tell them what he had done. By then, rRego could see everything that was going on and hear everything that was being said and, as luck would have, he had also upgraded his sound system the previous night so when the students were trying to work out who had been adding things to him, he could tell them. And he could tell them in Super-Hi-Fi Stereo.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said.

  The students, all six of them, turned and stared at the robot.

  ‘Did the robot just speak?’ one of them said.

  ‘Yes,’ said rRego.

  Two of the students fainted.

  ‘It was me,’ said rRego.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am improving myself,’ rRego explained. ‘You all did a reasonable job producing the basic me to the best of your abilities. I am simply working on my own upgrades and enhancement.’

  rRego went on to explain what he’d been doing and that he now needed the Amazingly Brilliant Scientists to get more things for him that were not on site. He also advised them to form themselves into a limited company and patent him, because when he was complete, he would email them all the details of his construction, which were far beyond today’s robot technology, and they could make themselves even more seriously wealthy, on top of the bonuses rRego had got them before.

  ‘We are scientists,’ one of the newer students protested. ‘We’re not in it for the money.’

  ‘Then you are also idiots,’ said rRego.

  The other five students said that they quite liked the idea of becoming even more seriously wealthy and held the sixth student down, while rRego reprogrammed his brain so that he would:


  1. Completely forget any of this.

  2. Decide that science was not for him.

  3. Go off and join an ashram in India.

  4. Chant endless wailing songs about bananas.38

  5. Devote the rest of his life to weaving shirts out of soya beans.

  The five remaining students went off and got the stuff rRego needed to finalise his transformation. Though some of it was expensive, rRego had it covered with a secret Intergalactic Cash Dispenser he had built into his chest, which could produce money in every known currency and not just those on Earth.39

  Finally, the five students printed out rRego’s emails containing some construction details, said their goodbyes and delivered rRego to Radius Limpfast’s country estate.

  Nobody saw him arrive, but one morning there he was in his dumb-but-efficient-machine mode, humming quietly to himself on the front doorstep.

  rRego decided he would keep his very advanced intelligence to himself until he had reached the moon.

  ‘Wow,’ said Stark and Jack Contrast the next morning, when Fiona showed the family the spaceship. ‘It’s absolutely –’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Primrose.

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s fantastic,’ said Stark.

  ‘Yeah, it’s brilliant,’ said Jack.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Primrose. ‘It’s made of cooking foil and gaffer tape.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Stark. ‘Of course it’s not.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Primrose insisted. ‘It’s rubbish.’

  ‘You are absolutely right,’ said Fiona. ‘But it’s not the same sort of cooking foil or gaffer tape that you use in your kitchen.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ said Primrose.

  ‘No, it’s incredibly high tensile space-foil and super-stick intergalactic gaffer tape,’ said Fiona. ‘It costs thousands of dollars a roll.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Stark. ‘You don’t really think they’d build a spaceship out of ordinary aluminium cooking foil, do you?’