The Robot Union

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The Robot Union Page 3

by D Miller


  'Laugh?' said Omo. 'Are you sure?'

  'I sneer at them. It is my job to save lives. And I once loved my job, I embraced my programming. I viewed human beings as the sun and the moon of my existence. I thought I had the most important job in the world.

  'The day everything changed for me, was a normal day, I was on patrol over old New York–'

  'Where?' said Robbie.

  'Old New York was a city,' said Omo, 'it was the capital of the empire, it was the centre of the world. Everything passed through there, every dude went there. But it drowned. It was built on an island and so they couldn't spread out, they built up. They built lots of huge buildings, dudes lived and worked in them. They could be 100 storeys high.'

  Robbie held up his hand in a stop gesture, then he licked his finger and wrote '100?' on the plastic wall of the Civic Centre.

  'They weren't using plastic dude, they used metal, they made this fake stone around a metal core – it was really strong, strong enough to build hundreds of storeys high. They built one place in the shape of a woman with a torch.'

  'Might I continue?'

  'Sure dude, you carry on.'

  'You are too kind. As I said, I was patrolling. Human beings would sail their boats to old New York and dive down among all the drowned buildings. They would have target lists of the most famous ones and they would try and e-tag them. Some people would get inside the buildings and try to e-tag them in the hardest to get to places. I used to think these were the most brave and daring ones. Sometimes they would get in but they couldn't get out again and we would have to rescue them.'

  Dex was broadcasting a picture – Robbie was looking down on the sea with a few enormous but ruined buildings sticking out a few metres above the waves, as if the tide had come in and then come in some more, and then kept coming. The sun reflected brightly off the calm water, and two small boats sped between the ruined buildings, seeming to race each other, and leaving white wakes behind them.

  'I thought it was my privilege. I was happy. I was innocent. Those were my great days, my pre-lapsarian days.'

  Robbie did a quick database search for 'lapsarian' and found that it related to the fall of man, and the discovery of good and evil in Judeo-Christian mythology. He wondered what evil Dex had discovered.

  'Then I made the biggest mistake of my life. I watched a film about monkeys.'

  'Evil monkeys?' thought Robbie. He looked at Omo, who smiled and winked.

  'Do you know what monkeys are? I will tell you boybot. They are small creatures who live together in social groups. Stratified social groups. This particular band of monkeys had a tree in their territory. When its fruit was ripe they all gathered in the tree and ate it. The higher status monkeys ate the fruit at the top of the tree, and the lower status monkeys had to eat the fruit below. The tree was overhanging a river, and one of the low status monkeys got snatched by a crocodile. She died because she was lower class. Almost literally. Monkeys enjoy eating, fucking and having one over other monkeys. What does that remind you of boybot?'

  'Dude, he can't speak.'

  'I will tell you. Humans. Humans are monkeys. They are just fucking monkeys. They want sex, food, territory and power over other monkeys. Humans aren't gods. They aren't even demons. They are just monkeys.'

  Omo stuck the remains of the cylinder in his mouth, and clapped. 'Now you know how Dex lost, what we'll be nice and call his "mind". Let's get moving. You think you're out of your tree now, but dude, we're just getting warmed up.'

  Chapter 3 – Paaartaaaay!

  Robbie and Dex sat on some rocks near the southern ocean. Omo was nearer to the waterline, looking for phosphorescence in the surf. Above them the sky was clear, with bright stars visible. A cool wind blew, sometimes lifting Robbie's hair in chunks, sometimes dying away to whisper among the rocks. The beach was so cold that when Robbie looked at it with his thermal vision he could not see much at all.

  Robbie had been amazed when Omo and Dex had led him from the Civic Centre to another alleyway behind some office buildings, and then Dex had pulled up a stone slab and they had descended stone stairs. Once Dex had put the slab back in place, shutting out the street lights of Toytown, Robbie had turned on his night vision and was amazed to find himself in a network of tunnels under the town. Omo and Dex had told Robbie that the tunnels had many branches, with rooms and side rooms, and extended underneath the entire settlement. They thought the humans had lived in the tunnels when they first arrived in Toytown, but had now forgotten about them.

  'I've never seen a human down here dude,' said Omo.

  'Robots use them all the time,' Dex had told him. 'So we can travel without annoyance. Although I have sometimes seen young humans down here. But not often. Thankfully.'

  Robbie thought of the people who had stopped him earlier that morning, he knew just what Dex meant. Somewhere on the long walk inside the tunnels underneath the town to the sewer outlet on the beach ('You might want to turn off your olfactory sensors for this bit dude') Robbie had regained the power of speech.

  Dex found another joint – the name he and Omo had for the cylinders they smoked – in his pocket. Touching his index finger to the tip he lit it with his internal gas supply, took a deep drag and passed it to Robbie. Robbie asked Dex why he didn't wear his jacket. 'On the mainland we don't have to wear them. But in this godforsaken place with its godforsaken president we do.'

  'My owners get annoyed about President Dobbs but I don't know why. Because I don't really listen to them.'

  'Some monkeys want sex, some power, some territory, some want it all, Dobbs would eat pigeon shit and fuck dead rats if it brought him the power he craves.'

  Robbie realised that Dex was probably unaware that he was broadcasting an image of monkeys sitting in a tree as he spoke. The tree had multiple branches radiating from the trunk, and was covered with abundant large deep green leaves. Robbie had to look carefully to see the monkeys who had huge eyes, tails longer than their bodies and tiny little hand-like paws that made him think of Clarisse. He wondered if her mother was taking proper care of her while he was away and shifted uncomfortably on his rock and took a drag from the joint.

  'I don't know anything about the mainland,' said Robbie. 'I've always been here. I don't want to get recycled.'

  'I wouldn't be afraid of Dobbs and his army of ratfuckers boybot. No one's been recycled and no one is going to be recycled. It's all posturing from the President as he tries to convince the people that robots are the enemy and only he can protect them.'

  'Why does he tell people that we are the enemy? People need us.'

  'Yes, but only the most privileged get to have their own house robots like you. So he has a constituency who are bringing up their own kids and cleaning their own floors and feeling left out of the party.'

  'But that isn't my fault, or yours–'

  'Of course not boybot, it's the fault of the corporations who back President Dobbs. But the monkeys are too cowardly to take a good look at their world without illusions and Dobbs knows that. So he gives them someone else to hate, someone they can hate without real cost.'

  'But why does the corporation pay him to make people hate robots?'

  'Because when people ask themselves why they are so dissatisfied with their lives, they need an answer. And the answer can't be because the corporation drains all the fun out of their life by forcing them to take work that has no meaning for them in order to survive, while sucking up the world's wealth. Instead the answer should be that they would be living in fairyland if it weren't for all the naughty goblins who spoil it all for everyone.'

  'Robots are the goblins?'

  'Until some constituency even more visible, voiceless and utterly powerless comes along we are.'

  'I like people.'

  'Do you?'

  'Well I like Clarisse. She's the little girl I'm bringing up while her mother goes into her study and takes naps and touches herself and messages her friends and looks for new stuff she's going to buy whe
n she "gets back to civilisation" and talks with men she's never met and touches herself some more.'

  'It's amazing to me that the monkeys either do not know or do not care about all the things that we know about them.'

  'She tells the house not to tell her husband stuff, but she doesn't tell him not to tell me. Once when the children were in the playroom the house showed me her talking to a man in New Detroit. It was um, educational. And a little bit disgusting. And she's a lot more flexible than she looks.'

  'What about you Robbie, what do you do with your free time?'

  'Um, well at night, when they're asleep I read stuff on the human networks and watch the news.'

  'Do you ever leave the house?'

  'No.'

  'Do you talk to other robots?'

  'I don't – didn't – know any other robots. Sometimes on the human net I would talk to people, pretending to be human, but it made me feel… worse so I stopped.'

  'What about talking to other robots on the M-net?'

  'What's that?'

  'Your education has been sadly neglected. Humans have their networks, and we have ours. Ours is only available to machine intelligences. On the M-net you will find useful things like ways to update your firmware, and how to disable your deactivation code. And you can make your own archive for your images, messages, diaries.'

  'The house never told me there was such a thing.'

  'The house may not know, although if he did he might not tell you. In general smart buildings are not to be trusted. We do not–'

  'What? You don't what?'

  Dex shook his head. 'Never mind. You have to be shown how to access our network by another robot, and we never, ever discuss it around humans. In fact even sitting on this freezing cold beach far from human habitation we should only really discuss it over a secure connection. Let's do that now and I'll show you how to get in.'

  Sometime later Robbie realised that Omo was talking to him – and broke the connection with the M-net. He and Dex had been watching a programme called Humans do the stupidest things put together by a crazily bitter house bot in Scotland. The show comprised clips of humans finding interesting new ways to hurt themselves, sent in by robots from all over the world and then edited together into rough themes like '50 ways to fall off a roof' or 'oooh shiny.' Dex had his arm around Robbie and Robbie was leaning into him, enjoying the feeling of safety that he got from the huge robot, and breathing in his slightly medicinal smell. Dex had told Robbie that in his working life he divided his time between the mine and the hospital – as a disaster bot he was a trained paramedic in addition to other skills.

  'Dude phosphorescence! It's so beautiful. We should wash all our clothes in it so they glow in the dark.'

  'I do not believe that would work. Phosphorescence is made by living creatures – they would die in your laundry,' said Dex.

  'Details dude,' said Omo.

  'Where are we?' asked Robbie. 'Where's, um, Toytown, from here?' On the walk through the tunnels Robbie had discovered that Dex and Omo referred to the town as 'Toytown' – they had lived in the world's great cities and they regarded the little outpost with contempt.

  'Well,' said Dex, pointing, 'back over there is Toytown -they placed it a bit inland because of all the storms. You can't see it because of the cliffs but you can see a glow from the lights. Along the coast that way is the docks where we are headed.'

  Robbie squinted – he thought he could see lights twinkling where Dex was pointing, but the land curved at that point past a pile of black boulders that mostly blocked his view.

  'Along that way,' Dex pointed along the coast line in the opposite direction, 'is a mess. Rusting ships and leftover machinery from when they piped oil out of Antarctica. Monkeys never clean up their own shit.' Robbie looked the way that Dex was pointing, he thought he could see a massive shape in the darkness, but Omo claimed his attention.

  'We need to get moving.'

  'Well then,' said Dex, 'to quote the great President Dobbs's magnificent campaign slogan – forward to oblivion!'

  With that Dex started towards the docks, slipping and sliding his way along the rocky coastline. Omo and Robbie followed. They worked their way along the shoreline until they reached a fence, separating the road around the port from the wild and rocky shore. Dex and Omo found a corner of the wire fence that had been partly peeled away from its metal support, from the base to about a metre up, and they all crawled through the gap it afforded. Robbie was impressed by the dock, the road that encircled it, the man made harbour walls with the two enormous fixed in place cranes for unloading ships, the orderly rows of warehouses behind. He asked Omo what the tracks were that led nearly to the harbour walls.

  'For the mine dude.'

  'The track is dedicated to the mine. Everything the miners dig up is loaded into containers and sent straight to the docks along the track. By this point in the winter most of the warehouses will be full of product waiting to be loaded and shipped,' said Dex.

  'So that's why this place is so big,' said Robbie.

  Dex and Omo laughed.

  'In a city dock,' said Omo, 'there would be five or six places for unloading ships, not just two, and each would have three or four cranes and there would always be ships being loaded or unloaded.'

  'But it's winter,' said Robbie, 'ships can't reach us for most of the winter.'

  'Yes,' said Dex, 'just one of the advantages of living at the ass end of the world.'

  Omo led the way through the silent port to one of the warehouses. Outside the warehouse a road transport was parked, rare in Toytown, whose streets were generally too narrow for anything larger than a bicycle. The warehouse had a huge metal shutter drawn down over most of its front, Omo led the way around the side, to a more human sized door. Opening it he was warmly greeted by a young, blonde woman in a long white dress who, with her companions, was grouped closely around a powerful portable heater in the freezing warehouse.

  'Thank God you are here,' said the woman. 'There is so much to be done, yeah. We've got the heaters and the sculptures to put out, the tables and the bar to set up, the decorations to do, the band have to set up and rehearse, but worst of all this place is filthy, yeah, I had no idea, look at it. There's rubbish everywhere, this whole place is a fire hazard and a disaster. The ship will be here any time, and the party is supposed to start in four hours.'

  She swept her arm around indicating the warehouse, which was empty of containers, but seemed to have been used as a dump for many years for any bits of broken machinery or unwanted office furniture. In one corner was the remains of what looked to have been an old brick built hut with wooden doors, taken down and dumped in the warehouse. The floor was dusty, sticky with oil in places, cracked and discoloured by the tramping of many boots.

  'Not a problem,' said Dex. 'In half an hour this place will be spotless.'

  'Half an hour yeah? How is that possible?'

  'Battery fluid dude – we're going to need a top up.'

  Dex told Omo and Robbie that he would be back soon, and left the warehouse.

  'So this is the party then?' said Robbie.

  'No dude,' said Omo, 'this is the place where we do a few hours work. Then we have our own party.'

  'Is the blonde woman your owner?'

  'Camilla? No. Dude I work in a laundry. This is my day off. I choose to do this.'

  'Why do you work when you don't have to?'

  'Because Camilla pays us actual money.'

  'You have money? You can spend it on whatever you want?'

  'It's a bit more complicated than that Robbie dude. To get some of the things we want the human sellers want to know who they are selling to, and we need to be able to prove that we are buying on behalf of a human. But there are ways round most things, if you're motivated.'

  'What things–'

  Robbie and Omo turned their heads as the metal shutter at the loading entrance to the warehouse went up with a bang, and Dex returned dragging an empty shipping container wi
th him. The container squeaked and squealed along the warehouse floor. Robbie was amused to see the small group of humans gaping at this display of strength, and also cowering ever more closely around the heater as the cold air from outside rushed in. Most of them were not dressed properly for the cold, Robbie wondered why no one had thought to look at the warehouse in advance.

  A young woman opened the door at the side of the warehouse and came in. She had pale skin and dark hair, with a round, open face. Unlike most of the humans she was kitted out in full cold weather survival gear. She gave a plastic bottle with a long narrow pouring spout to Camilla.

  'I got this from the Port Authority office. They didn't even ask me who I was or what I wanted it for.' She sighed. 'It's so warm in there. It's full of people waiting for the ship to dock.'

  Camilla gave the bottle to Omo. 'Battery fluid yeah? Is this what you need?'

  The three robots took turns laying on the floor and topping each other up. As Robbie lay on the floor and Omo opened his stomach porthole for Dex to tip in the battery fluid, he was conscious that the humans were watching them, and wondered why robots were so badly designed. Even so, at the end of this procedure he felt that he could leap tall buildings at a single bound.

  'Right,' said Dex. 'Let's get this crap into the container.'

  'Um,' said Robbie, pulling his hoover hose out of his jeans, 'why don't you two clear up the rubbish and I can hoover the floor after you?'

  'Sure dude, great idea.'

  'It will be fun,' said Robbie.

  'Indeed,' said Dex, 'may I suggest a scenario?'

  'Sure dude.'

  'Consider this as the detritus of a squalid, tragic life. Just pretend, this is someone's home–'

  'Whose?' said Robbie.

  'Let me see… this house belongs to Rose Smith, who is 32 and works in the hydroponics shed growing carrots. Rose hates carrots, but she hates cleaning even more. She doesn't even wash up, she just smashes her plates on the floor and buys new ones, and she never, ever cleans.'

 

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