by D Miller
He had been at the mine, waiting to go to the capital. Amber had taken Dex and some of the miners to the capital, driving the captured vehicle into the sea and around the coast, and had come back twice more to take others. Everyone had wanted to go, including Sheena, Shauna and Sharon who had come to the mine with other robot refugees from Toytown after the union had urged members to escape to the mine. Robbie, Omo, Darren, Adrienne and George were going to be among the last group to go to the capital; his friends were looking after Robbie, as he had slowly and steadily grown stronger. They had never made it. A massive unseasonal storm had blown up, out at sea. The human weather forecasters predicted it would not make landfall, but the satellites warned the union that the pattern of high and low pressure areas the humans were relying on to predict its path were about to change, and the storm was coming for Toytown. Robbie, his friends and the other robots left at the mine had returned to the town to help with the evacuation and storm aftermath. Once Amber had driven everyone back to the town he had freed the captured vehicle.
'Aren't you worried that it will go back to the humans?' Robbie had asked him.
Amber had smiled, a little sadly. 'It has a manual over ride switch. Think how you would feel if someone could flick a switch and make you do anything they wanted, while you just watched from inside your body?'
'I think I would go mad.'
'Still think it's going back to the humans?'
The evacuation had not gone well. The Mayor had hidden in his mansion, and had refused to open the shelter underneath it. Many humans refused to believe the robots, seeing instead a sinister plot to corral humans in one place and kill them. Amber had been with Max and two of the miners at the fairground, trying to dismantle as much as possible of Max's bangers ride and pack it away securely when the police had arrived, beaten Amber and the miners and arrested them. Max had protested and been arrested too. Those miners who had not gone to the capital had marched to the police station, collecting other robots on the way, including municipal workers and robots from the laundry, they had walked into the building and freed those who had been arrested. Boris, one of the miners who had been with them in the refinery tunnel during the flight from boyboy, and who had been arrested with Amber, later told Robbie and Omo that the cops had left through the back door as the miners had come in the front. This was probably a prudent move on their part, since most of the Toytown force had been called to the capital the hundred or so robots easily outnumbered the police left behind. As well as freeing the captives, including Max, the robots had taken the opportunity of smashing all the weapons they could find, including every single electric baton.
One group of robots had been shot at by citizens, a robot from Omo's laundry had been badly injured. In fact an hysterical attitude had grown up among the humans, some of whom seemed to positively embrace the idea that robots intended to murder them all. The robots had retreated to the town tunnels, the hospital and the hotel, and concentrated on broadcasting warnings with instructions about where to go, and how to prepare for the storm if staying put. Despite this Robbie and Omo had recruited Flo and Jon to go with them to get Clarisse and Tim. Robbie had been prepared to kidnap the children and their parents, but to his surprise the man was not there, and the woman accepted that Robbie wanted to protect the children. Robbie had assured her, with a glance at her abdomen, that she would have her own room in the hotel and a chance to rest while he took care of the children.
'Why would I need to rest?' she had asked Robbie, with that special look he knew so well, the one that said I am sucking a lemon while simultaneously planning the execution by impaling / boiling alive / being eaten alive by wild dogs / all of the above of everyone who has ever annoyed me, starting with you. He had been unable to resist one more glance at her belly.
'I'm sorry,' he had said, 'but I have excellent hearing. I can hear your heart beat, and I can hear another heart beat too.'
She had pursed her lips. Robbie, Omo, Flo and Jon and had been silent, waiting for the explosion. The children had looked between them all, aware of the tension but unsure what was happening. The woman had taken a deep breath and let it out. 'Fine,' she had said, 'I'll pack a bag. I suppose you remember how to pack for the children?'
Robbie had agreed that he did. Omo and Flo had played with the children while he and the woman had gone upstairs. Robbie had made sure to pack the children's dolls and their favourite toys, anything that he might wish he had packed later if the house should be destroyed. He had even put Tim's fish in their travel tank, and emptied, dismantled and packed the larger tank. He had tried to persuade the house to let him download Tim's lesson plan, but the house refused, warning the woman that it was all a plot; she had surprised Robbie by telling the house to shut up.
Robbie had wondered where the man was, but the woman had said nothing about him. On the subway Clarisse had sat on Robbie's lap and buried her head in his chest, he had been surprised to find her normal optimism so shaken, while Tim had cheerfully talked to Omo and Flo. Jon had sat silently, annoying Robbie by carrying nothing and paying no attention to the children, in fact often trying to call Flo's attention away from them. At one point the woman had been questioned by citizens who wanted to know if she was with the robots of her own free will. She was variously warned of an evil robot plot to kidnap citizens and kill / enslave them. She had smiled nastily at the enquirers and told them that she was with her loyal family robots, and after that they had ignored her, probably annoyed by her claim to such ostentatious wealth.
Robbie, Omo, Jon and Flo had taken the woman and children to the hotel, a place that the robot broadcasts told humans to gather at. Darren was at the hospital with the injured robots, including Amber, plus those robots who normally worked at the hospital and some of the municipal workers, trying to evacuate patients into the hospital basement over the objections of their human colleagues. Robbie was relieved to see at least some families with children were among those who had taken their warning seriously. One old couple spoke to Robbie, they had said that they knew robots would never hurt people, and had had no doubts that their warnings were sincere.
Sheena, Shauna and Sharon were outside the hotel broadcasting and streaming video reporting on the storm; the more the wind rose and the rain pounded down, the more they seemed to like it. Eventually Sheena had been blown halfway down the street, and George had asked a group of miners to bring them inside, dragging them if necessary. When the storm hit they had all sheltered in the underground ballroom. In the ballroom Robbie, Omo, Adrienne and George had played with the children to distract them from the noise of the storm. Later Adrienne had watched Tim and Clarisse falling asleep in Robbie's arms, and had asked their mother why she was so detached from them? In return she had received a poisonous look, which had just encouraged her.
After the storm the hotel had been full for the first time, the woman and the children were among the new guests. Their house had been smashed. It was dead. Robbie was not in mourning. The storm had smashed most of the houses to the north and east of the town centre, while the centre itself had mostly minor damage. Citizens had died, some in their homes, some in last minute attempts to run for the safety of the shelters. George had to get to grips with the complexity of hotel management for the first time, a difficulty that was compounded by Nurmeen being in the capital, since she was the only one who understood how to humour the hotel so that he didn't get hysterical when, say, all the towels weren't folded and stacked on the shelf so that the hotel name was the right way round and facing up, and then sulk and refuse to honour even the simplest of requests for the rest of the day.
Sheena, Shauna and Sharon had stayed on at the hotel, they had dressed themselves in black waitress outfits with frilly white aprons. They were rude to the guests, insisting on talking to them in pidgin English. 'Old man you want porridge you want toast you decide now chop chop.' Despite this Robbie saw guests who took care to sit in their section of the dining room, some of them he was sure were deliberately
indecisive in order to provoke the girl bots ('one piece of toast or two? I shouldn't have two, too many carbs, but I'm hungry, shall I have butter? Maybe it should only be the one piece but then again…'). The bread maker and the toaster were annoyed at having to produce a constant stream of bread and toast in the morning, they told Robbie making toast was a distraction from their audience who needed them. Robbie had kept to himself the retort that a large part of their audience were in the process of being scooped up and tipped into a recycling sorter.
Robbie and his friends had stayed in Toytown, helping out in the aftermath of the storm, trying to keep up with strike news from the capital and around the world, until the day a friend had led Robbie to a room in the mansion. There had been quite a crowd waiting to greet him, including the technician who had called Robbie 'it'; Robbie found himself hating the young man with some passion as he had sat at the control panel for the medi-unit, smirking. But the person who really had Robbie's attention had been President Dobbs, or rather his avatar, who had dismissed Robbie's friend, and then accused Robbie of trying to kill boyboy.
'He bravely took you on, and this is the cowardly way you treated him.'
Dobbs had nodded to a human medi-tech, who had left, and returned wheeling boyboy in a portable medi-tank, resting on a trolley, its clear round sides displaying its contents. Robbie remembered the shock after shock he had felt. Betrayal, Dobbs and then boyboy, whose horribly burnt body floated in the temporary tank.
'You beat him and you set fire to him. See what you did.'
'No,' Robbie had said, 'not me, not my friends, he was fine when we left him. Boyboy's friends did this to him.'
This had earned Robbie the President's fury, and a savage beating from his security avatars. In the end someone had hit him in the head and President Dobbs had called them off. 'Enough, enough,' he had said, 'he can't keep boyboy company if he's dead.'
The gel was down to Robbie's waist. Boyboy had floated up to almost the top, his features wavered, just underneath the thick fluid. Robbie averted his eyes. Then he looked back again. He ought to be able to hear hissing from boyboy's breathing mask. He bent over, trying not to touch the corpse, and listened carefully. There was no sound. Had the unit cut off his air supply because he was dead, or had cutting off his air supply killed him? The banging started again. Robbie listened carefully. It sounded like some machinery was trying to rotate, and meeting resistance. Something was broken.
After the beating Robbie had lain on the floor unable to move; they had beaten him with their electric batons and his arms and legs were numb. Two of the security avatars had dragged him from the room, along a corridor and into another room, next to a medical support platform that boyboy was already laid on, being prepared for immersion by the medi-techs. He remembered that he had thought the platform was just part of the room, since one whole side of the medi-unit, the white opaque length, was open and retracted so that he could not see it. He had seen but had not appreciated the significance of the metal restraining bands arching above the patient, and had watched as the medi-techs finished their work, then the smirking technician had taken their place. The patient controls had descended from the ceiling to where a person lying on the platform could easily access them, and the technician had awkwardly bent down and around to tap something in to them. Robbie's watching of this had been interrupted when two of the avatars had dragged him upright while the medi-techs forced a tube down his throat, and fitted the hood, he remembered the feeling of invasion and claustrophobia.
When the medi-techs were finished the avatars had let go of him and he had dropped to the floor, he had felt every bit of their contempt. After a while the smirking technician had bent over him and Robbie had felt a jack being pushed into his ear socket. Then he had gone from Robbie's view; Robbie was facing towards boyboy with most of the room behind him. He could see a row of round holes, about 30mm in diameter, at the bottom of the curving wall under the patient platform. After a while green fluid had started to seep from them, and slowly move across the floor towards him. He had heard a noise, a tone that began low then started to increase its pitch. As he watched the green gel make its way towards him he had felt a tingling in his arms and legs. He was concentrating on moving his right hand, wanting to remove the jack from his ear socket. But then the world had gone dark, and looking around he had realised he was in his bed, in his cottage, with the night pressing against the windows, and the wind howling and moaning down the chimney.
'Six o'clock, time for work,' he had thought, throwing back the grey blanket.
The gel now just covered Robbie's feet. Boyboy had come to rest on the floor, and Robbie had discovered something else that he brought to the party – he smelt really bad. Robbie turned off his olfactory sensors. There was a gurgling sucking noise; the last of the gel was draining away. The quality of the light changed, it brightened and dimmed, throwing shadows. The side of the unit that was white and opaque had begun to ripple. Energy was passing up and down the wall, coming to rest in a pattern of lines, like the slats of a blind. Robbie realised the wall had transformed into a shutter, which immediately started to ratchet upwards, banging and shaking. 'Yes,' thought Robbie, 'yes, yes, yes.' The shutter had raised enough to allow a gap Robbie estimated at 100mm, before collapsing back down for 90mm. Robbie stepped over boyboy, crouched down and forced his fingers into the gap, and saw other fingers coming from the other side. He shoved upwards as hard as he could, rising with the shutter as it rose for some millimetres, stuck, rose again, and stuck again. As he stood he could see legs, then torsos, and then the shutter gave way completely and retracted in one jerk to its fullest extent, and he saw Darren, Amber and Omo crowded together with their arms uplifted and like him taken by surprise by the stubborn shutter's sudden surrender.
Omo grabbed his arm, and pulled him forward and out of the unit. He had been unbalanced by the sudden release of the shutter, he tried to regain his balance but his feet slipped in the gel on the shiny clinical white floor, and he cannoned into Omo, they went down together. Without getting up Omo rolled towards Robbie, 'Dude are you OK?'
'I am more than OK. I am super OK. I thought I would never get out of there.'
Omo started to kiss his face. 'I love you so much. Oh dude you taste terrible,' he panted and kissed Robbie some more, 'and you smell vile.'
Robbie laughed.
'Dude I didn't know anything in the world could smell that bad. I think my olfactory centre just died of shock.'
Looking up Robbie could see that he was where he had been when the nightmare had started. The room was all white gleaming floors (at least until Robbie started rolling around on them) and white tiled gleaming walls. It was windowless, with the medi-unit and its ancillary machinery at one end.
'Oh God, I really thought I would never get out of there. I couldn't see anything, and I was choking, and something bumped into me and there was banging and I thought the monster had found me.'
Omo kissed him some more. 'Dude shush, shush, it's all good now.'
'Omo could you stop rolling around on the floor with my patient?' said Darren.
Robbie looked at Omo. 'He's right. We had better get up.' He reached out a hand to Darren. 'Can you help me?' The instant Darren grasped his hand Robbie jerked him forward as hard as he could, and Darren fell on top of him. Robbie put his arms around Darren and started to kiss his face.
'Darren I thought I'd never see you again. Say you missed me.'
'Dude you truly smell indescribably horrible. Of course I missed you, you fool. Now let me get up.'
Robbie released him, Amber helped Darren up, then he pulled Robbie to his feet and into a hug. 'Welcome back Robbie. I really missed you.'
Robbie drew back and looked at Amber. He touched the scar on his forehead from where he had been pushed onto the floor by the police, what now seemed like a million years ago. He touched his fingers to a similar line running down Amber's temple and onto his cheek.
Amber smiled. 'Yeah, it's nearly
healed.' He looked over Robbie's shoulder.
Robbie felt a hand on his arm. He turned round. A short, brown skinned, dark haired human female stood before him, he had to look down to see her eyes. His eyes swept the room he was in, there were other humans, some of them were putting boyboy into a body bag, and gagging. Had they been watching as he and Omo and Darren rolled around on the floor? Robbie decided he wasn't going to feel embarrassed about it. The woman was holding a surgical mask up to her face. For the first time Robbie felt a twinge of superiority – the humans didn't have the option of turning off their olfactory nerves.
'Robbie I'm Dr Tam. I'd like to examine you if I may.'
Robbie looked at Darren, who nodded.
'OK,' he said.
A woman detached herself from the knot of humans around boyboy and came over to Robbie.
'I need to speak to the robot,' she said. 'I want to ask it what happened here.'
Dr Tam turned to the woman, she lowered the mask and smiled nicely. 'His name is Robbie, he's my patient, and you can speak to him just as soon as I've determined that he is fit to be questioned.'
'It seems lively enough to me.'
'I'll let you know when you can talk to him.'
'I need its clothes. They're evidence.'
Robbie peeled off his t-shirt and dropped it on the floor. He kicked off his soggy shoes then tried to take off his jeans, but they clung to his legs and he struggled to push them down. In the end he sat on the floor while Darren and Omo worked them down his legs inch by inch. Omo took the jeans and dropped them on top of Robbie's t-shirt, and Darren and Amber pulled him to his feet, naked. The police woman was staring at Robbie's body, he caught her eye, smiled and winked. She looked away, pursing her lips. Darren, Omo and Amber were trying not to laugh. Dr Tam didn't try, she just laughed.