Tales of the Talking Picture

by Tom Slemen

  ‘I thought we were supposed to be getting the stunners tomorrow off Scotch Steve?’ Jim was saying when Harry’s hand swiftly clamped over his mouth.

  ‘Keep your friggin' voice down and read this,’ Harry handed him the edition of Update, but after a seemingly eternal minute, Jim Doggerty was still struggling to get the gist of the front page news. He handed the biodegradable newspaper back to Harry, utterly defeated. ‘Why can’t they tell the news in pictures, like in Vile Gossip? It’s all double-dutch words.’

  Roach sighed, then explained what was going to happen in a slow clear voice. ‘Listen, the Chancellor, Helmut Krank has decided to scrap cash. We are all going to be issued with a new type of forge-proof credit card that’ll contain our ID number, medical records, bank details, criminal records, DNA profile, psychological profile etcetera, etcetera, etcetera - got that?’

  Doggerty was baffled and angry. ‘But why Harry? Why?’

  ‘The Chancellor reckons the changeover from hard cash to electronic currency will be better for a few reasons - like the soaring crime rate, for example. Mugger’s can’t steal electronic currency, and neither can the bank robbers. Plus the fact that the rest of the planet no longer uses cash, thanks to the UniWorld Corporation so it’ll be greater economic compatibility and all that crap.’

  Doggerty gritted his teeth, squeezed his fists. He felt cheated. ‘But what about these hacker kids Harry? They can steal electronic currency.’

  ‘Yeah but they’re a minority, and Herr Chancellor says all known hacker kids will be rounded up and sent to some island in the Orkneys to be rehabilitated in a village where there are no computers, no MindBook - no high-technology. They also have to knit and do embroidery.’ said Roach.

  ‘That is way beyond harsh. They’ve gone too far Harry,’ Doggerty wanted to scream. ‘They can’t just do that to the British public, we won’t accept it Harry, they didn’t even ask us if we wanted all this.’

  ‘They did,’ Roach said, shuffling ahead in the queue, ‘they had a referendum across Europe when we were inside. Most people want paper money and coins to be withdrawn. Welcome to realityville Jimmy boy’

  ‘Well that’s it then, isn’t it,’ tears glistened on Doggerty’s eyeballs, ‘we’re unemployable anyway, and now we can’t even carry out a decent crime. It’s the end, Harry, the end.’

  To underline Doggerty’s thoughts of doom, thunder rolled across the skies over the megalopolis of London and suspiciously-huge hailstones battered the café's shatterproof windows.

  ‘We’ll just have to make the most of this last month of cash,’ Roach was forever the optimist. ‘We’ll pull off as many jobs as we can while there’s still untraceable paper money in circulation.’

  ‘Come off it Harry, the police know the criminal mind. They’ll be stepping up patrols at a time like this,’ Doggerty told him with a painful laugh.

  ‘Then we’ll have to adapt; invent new crimes if we have to,’ said Roach, out the corner of his mouth. When he finally reached the food dispenser, he inserted his forged credit card into the slot, tapped in the PIN code and made a selection from the touch screen menu. ‘I’m just having a pizza and a Coke. What do you want?’ Roach said to his friend.

  ‘A large diet Psychoburger with onion rings and Supernova sauce, and um, a Joopiter milk shake,’ said Jim. 'I can't eat much when I'm upset. My stomach's in knots.'

  ‘They don’t do Joopiters in here,’ Roach told him after reading the onscreen milk shakes list.

  ‘Well how about Quicksilver Ice Cream?’ Jim Doggerty suggested.

  ‘Yeah, they have that; diet or regular?’ Roach asked.

  ‘Diet.’ Jim scanned the café for a vacant table, then he gritted his teeth and said: 'I hope the Chancellor dies, I do! I never wished that on anyone before Harry but I wish he'd drop dead!'

  'Shut up, you're making a scene,' Roach warned his irate friend, then advised: 'watch the birdies on your tellyspecs.'

  After a few silent touches on the food-dispenser screen, the concealed mechanisms hurned into motion. Within seconds a rubbery microwaved pizza plopped down a chute and landed on a paper plate, and simultaneously a can of unfamiliar cola bearing Russian glyphs shot out of a compartment. Roach grabbed the can in mid-air. Another paper plate slid out of a slot and silver ice cream oozed down onto it from a pipe. Then two little doors parted in the dispenser and a small red box bearing a lightning-strike logo emerged from the machine. The Psychoburger had arrived.

  Seated at the corner table of the Bon Appetit Café, Roach and Doggerty faced the window, staring at the tropical storm and the streams of lightning snaking through the clouds.

  ‘You’re under arrest Roach,’ a cold voice said behind their backs.

  Harry froze, then turned to see it was Robert Davenport, an old cell-mate.

  ‘Rob! You stupid jailbird, you almost gave me a heart attack,’ Roach said with a smile.

  ‘How’re things Jim?’ Rob said to Doggerty as he sat facing Roach.

  ‘Badly,’ said Doggerty, ‘very badly.’ He munched the irradiated burger.

  ‘What are you doing round these parts?’ Harry asked his old friend.

  ‘I’ve gone into the home robotics market with him over there.’ Rob nodded at a docile-looking youth with red hair and freckles, sitting at a table on the other side of the café. ‘His name’s Alex Maxwell and he’s a genius.’ Rob added, ‘He’s my ticket to becoming a billionaire.’

  Alex, unaware he was being watched, was channelling all of his powers of concentration as he tried to balance a spoon on the top of a sauce bottle. The spoon fell.

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about anything technical - especially robots,’ Roach remarked scornfully to Davenport.

  ‘I deal with the business side of things,’ said Rob, defensively, and he unfolded a 'physible' virtual copy of the Financial Times and pretended to browse it.

  ‘And what’s business like?’ Roach asked, smirking at Doggerty.

  ‘Couldn’t be better, Harry,‘ claimed Rob, ‘I’m running a shop off Oxford Street. Can’t keep up with the demand.’

  ‘Whatever,’ Jim Doggerty said in a choked voice. The Psychoburger was molten hot because it evidently contained genetically-modified blue mustard. Doggerty thrust his incandescent tongue into the Quicksilver ice cream.

  ‘I’d like to see this shop,’ Roach challenged his friend.

  It was the most dilapidated shop Roach had ever set eyes upon, situated in a bleak cul-de-sac next to the back door of a run-down theatre, and it was miles away from Oxford Street, almost bordering the East End. Of course, Harry knew that Rob had always been an exaggerator.

  ‘The place is a bit out of the way isn’t it?’ Roach remarked. He gazed up at the pathetically handwritten sign above the shop that read:

  ROB’S CHEAP ROBOTS

  We Buy, Sell and Repair

  Any Make or Model (except Japanese Z90’s)

  For Industry and the Home

  ‘The place is a bit tacky at the moment but it’s early days yet.‘ Rob unlocked the large rusty padlock on the front door of the premises. The interior of the shop was a sight too. A crowd of surreal robots littered the place. Bipedal, wheeled, multi-limbed, dustbin shaped, humanoid, every type of model, old, new and discontinued.

  ‘Seen this one Harry?’ Rob picked up a remote control box and pointed it at the bald, lifeless window display robot. The mannequin in a bikini had been endowed with the likeness of a tall shapely woman, and the textured plastic skin was amazingly realistic. Rob turned to Alex and muttered something, and the youth said, ‘That one there,’ pointing to a button on the remote which Rob soon pressed.

  The robotic female danced up to Roach with impressive grace. She threw herself towards him and Roach caught her in his arms. He was embarrassed, but fascinated.

  ‘Ha! He’s blushing over a bot!’ exclaimed Doggerty scornfully at his colleague.

  Rob depressed the program-run button on the remote, and instantly the mannequin t
hrew Roach aside and prowled up to Doggerty.

  ‘Now what’s a nice girl like you doing in a - ‘ the little sneak-thief never got a chance to finish his cliché because the robotic flesh-coloured shop window dummy seized him by the wrist and bear-hugged him, squashing his face into the ample synthetic cleavage.

  ‘Mmmmph! Stop messing about!’ Doggerty called out to Rob as he was whisked off his feet. The motorised mannequin waltzed around the room with little Jim Doggerty and then forced him into a tango routine. Harry and Rob laughed at the dancing partners but Alex Maxwell bit his lip, full of concern - not for Doggerty - but for Elize, the adolescent’s beloved robotic substitute for a girlfriend. She was too good to be abused by the idiotic Rob and his silly antics.

  Five minutes went by and the dance still hadn’t finished. Doggerty was screaming out for help from Harry and Rob, but it seems that the program-break button on the remote control wasn’t working. Rob handed the control to Alex and he slid the back panel off it and quickly scanned the circuitry. It wasn’t the remote, it was a fault in the robot, possibly caused by some virus which had infiltrated the ROBOL programs in the mannequin’s semiconductor brain lattice. Hacker kids were probably behind it.

  Somehow, an utterly exhausted and rosy-faced Doggerty managed to squeeze out of the hydraulic grip of Elize the mannequin, and he slumped to the floor. As Harry and Rob went to his aid, he took out a mini-inhaler and sprayed his throat. He gasped, and was pulled out of harm’s way as the automaton continued to dance the fandango at express speed. It’s cold fusion battery was finally closed down by an automatic overheating cut-off circuit, and the simulacrum froze like a statue.

  ‘She isn’t designed for that type of locomotion Rob!’ Alex rushed to the aid of his Elize, and opened an access panel in her back to survey the bundles of optic fibres and complex circuit nodules.

  There was a gentle knock at the front door of the shop. Rob Davenport crept behind the counter and glanced down at the monitor screen of a closed-circuit TV camera that usually showed him who was outside. The screen was blank now for some reason. Then Rob recalled the blob of chewing gum that mischievous children had stuck on the small fish-eye lens of the TV camera.

  ‘Open the door, it might be a customer Rob,’ Alex suggested.

  Rob seemed very hesitant to admit the caller into the shop, and Roach wondered why.

  ‘Who are you hiding from Rob?’ Harry asked.

  ‘No one, mind your own business,’ said Rob, and he was startled by another knock at the door.

  Alex went to the door.

  ‘No! Don’t, that knock sounded heavy like -’ Rob had bad feelings about the caller, but Alex opened the front door.

  A towering 6ft hulk of a man stood there. Rob instantly recognised him and trembled. He was the bouncer from the seedy nightclub down the street who Rob had been vigilantly avoiding.

  ‘You Mr Davenport?’ the bouncer boomed, fixing Rob with an icy, hateful stare.

  ‘No, he’s just gone to lunch,’ said Rob, ‘Can I be of assistance?’

  ‘No,’ said the bouncer in a gruff voice, ‘I’ll wait here until he comes back.’ The goliath sat on a table that creaked under his weight.

  The shop door opened again and a small bald man with fashionable Picadilly Weeper sideburns strolled into Rob’s Cheap Robots. He was Mr Marker, a regular customer who had purchased two robots from Rob in the past. ‘Hello Mr Davenport,’ he said to Rob, ‘have you got a cheap reliable gardening robot in stock?’

  ‘So, you are Davenport,’ the bouncer snarled, and he made a dash towards Rob. Mr Marker fled from the shop in fright. The brawny Neanderthal grabbed Rob by his lapels then held him in mid air. ‘You know what Mr Davenport?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ Rob rasped, choked between the bouncers huge hard fists.

  ‘You sold my sister a housekeeper robot yesterday, and it ran amok this morning. It not only decided to vacuum-clean the carpet; it also decided to clean a birdcage. It sucked my niece’s parakeet through the bars of that cage - ‘

  ‘I’ll compensate your niece I swear -’ croaked Rob, his legs kicking about as he dangled.

  A mystical bang reverberated through Rob Davenport’s head, accompanied by a kaleidoscopic burst of colours in his mind’s eye. Then searing pain overwhelmed him, and for a brief instant before his consciousness faded, Rob thought he’d suffered a massive aneurysm. Then everything went black and silent. When he came around, he found himself on the other side of the room on his back, lying on an old pool table.

  ‘What happened?’ he groaned.

  ‘The bouncer walloped you,’ Roach was holding an ice-pack on Rob’s forehead.

  ‘He’ll be very sorry he did this -’ said Rob, ‘I have friends in very low places who’d give him a good beating -’

  ‘Get over it,’ was Roach’s advice, and with Doggerty’s help he eased his old friend off the table. They gently walked Rob about the shop floor, and he gradually regained full strength in his legs.

  ‘You don’t know the first thing about robots, do you?’ asked Roach, holding Rob by the forearm.

  ‘I know about the business side - making money out of them, but as I said, Alex takes care of the technical side of things,’ muttered Rob, then winced at the sharp ringing in his inner ears.

  ‘So you’re the expert on robots?’ Doggerty queried Alex with a smirk.

  ‘Yeah why? What do you do exactly for a living?’ Alex Maxwell retaliated defensively.

  ‘What’s an inertial interferometer?’ asked Roach, sharply.

  The youth gave a textbook reply that impressed his interrogators. ‘It’s a circular photoelectric wave guide component that gives a robot balance and position sense,’ Maxwell said.

  Harry Roach nodded, and eased Rob into an old easy chair. He then steepled his hands and walked around the shop humming random notes for a while, then opened a small first aid wall-cabinet, took out a tube of KillPain VaporSniff and hurled it into Rob’s lap.

  ‘Anyway, what do you know about robots Harry?’ Rob said, his pride was as injured as his skull. He inhaled the gaseous instant anaesthetic, then smiled with relief.

  ’Well I know this so-called business you and Alex are running is a joke,’ Roach replied, ‘There’s no money in second-hand robots when cheap brand-new robots are coming onto the market. You can’t compete with China. You’re flogging a dead horse.’

  ‘I don’t want to sound rude Harry but shut up and get out,’ Rob perched on the edge of the easy chair, gritting his teeth.

  ‘No wait a minute Rob, this is just constructive criticism -’ Harry explained with a lovely smile.

  ‘Well I don’t need it! Especially from a crook! Now beat it! The two of you - go!’ Rob’s head pounded again and the ringing faded back in. He sniffed at the tube but it was empty.

  ‘Don’t you want to be a millionaire within days?’ Roach pitched.

  ‘Oh I thought so,’ Rob talked to the ceiling, ‘another Harry Roach master-plan.’ Rob turned to face Alex Maxwell and said: ‘The last money-making scheme of this guy ended with me going down for two-years on Lundy! Two solid years, in the underwater prison.’

  ‘Oh it’s okay then Rob, It’s a bottle job - I understand.’ Roach buttoned up his coat and adjusted his trilby. He headed towards the door.

  ‘You know very well I’ve got the bottle to do anything, but I’m not going back to Lundy Prison for anyone,’ Rob told Harry, who slowed in his tracks. Doggerty was about to open the front door of the shop.

  Harry Roach turned and fixed a canny pair of eyes on Rob Davenport from beneath the trilby brim. ‘This plan will blow your mind,’ Harry promised.

  Minutes later they all sat at a circular table that had been cleared of electrical components, wires, optic fibres and motorised robot limbs. Harry furnished the three attentive listeners with the details of his plan. ’I take it you’re all aware that this is the last month of cash?’ Roach asked.

  ’Yeah, so what?’ said Rob, imagining Harry to have a
counterfeit money scam on his mind.

  Harry continued. ’In a month’s time there won’t be such a thing as untraceable cash. All money will be nothing more than a series of binary digits in a holographic credit card, making conventional robbery impossible.’

  ’Come on, don’t be long-winded,’ Rob was impatient. He wanted to know how he’d become a millionaire within days.

  ’So we are going to make hay while the sun’s still shining. This is our last opportunity to make a mint. I’m talking about bank jobs, one after the other across the country, starting here.’

  Rob buried his face in his hands and sighed loudly. ’A bank job - Jesus H Christ! Harry Roach, criminal mastermind!’ he said, sarcastically.

  ‘Yeah, but a bank job with a difference - we don’t do it ourselves.’ Roach waited for the penny to drop, but it stayed in mid-air in zero-gravity freefall.

  ‘Oh come on Harry,’ bawled Rob, ‘you’re not going to hire Micky Parks? He ran off with the money last time!’

  Roach shook his head and said, ‘No, not Micky Parks - a robot.’

  There was an eerie silent pause in the room. Jim, Rob and Alex glanced at one another, then back at Harry Roach.

  ‘We program a robot to do the job,’ Harry told them, with a sparkle in his criminal eye, ‘and we sit back and let it take the risks. Think about it. The ideal accomplice that can’t grass if it’s caught; who can’t get the shakes before a job, and can’t get greedy and run off with a job after the takings.’

  ‘Too complicated,’ Alex Maxwell told them all, ‘It’d take months of programming.’

  Roach strongly disagreed. ‘There’s nothing complicated about it,’ he said, ‘it’s very straightforward. Look around you; we’ve got all the equipment we need right here in this room, and what’s more, we have the talent as well. Alex, you’re obviously fluent in the robotic programming language ROBOL, and I know the FORTH computer language inside out so we can write the software for the job. My good friend Jim here is an expert in the field of electronic hardware, so he can help out with the nuts and bolts side of things.’