Expiration Day

by William Campbell Powell

  No. Not healed.

  Repaired.

  A memory rose, unbidden, of a name.

  Martin.

  Perhaps I said it aloud, perhaps I only thought the words.

  I am a robot.

  {Memory}

  Martin.

  We went on holiday with one of Dad’s friends a couple of years back, and it was awful. You could tell he didn’t like children, but his wife was besotted with their little kid. The kid’s name was Martin, and he was a ghastly brat. A boy, but his father made no secret that it was a robot—at best just a little too much stress on the second syllable of the name, but occasionally cruel little remarks about “Tin Boy”—and every time she overheard him, his wife looked ready to kill him.

  Boy, do you meet some weirdos …

  That was a holiday in Wales, which is a funny place, all mountains and terraced houses made out of real concrete—really traditional. So passé. Of course, New Cardiff is properly modern, built out of proper repolymerised PET. But we weren’t staying there. We were in some ghastly hole called Aber-something—all double-l’s and double-d’s and y’s—which was at the bottom of a valley so deep the gigahertz broadcasts couldn’t get in. A whole week with no vid. Well, there was sort of, and Dad said that the brochure hadn’t completely lied, but the signal was so weak—Dad put on a tech-sales voice and called it at-ten-u-a-ted—that you could only get color or 3-D, not both.

  Anyway, my point was that Aber-double-l’s barely had electricity, let alone TeraNet. It was primitive and dangerous. So when Martin the ghastly brat went for a walk along the beach, it should have been no surprise to anybody when he tumbled off a rock and landed in a pool of seawater.

  The first I knew something was wrong, was when I heard this eerie screaming sound, not loud, but insistent, and it set my teeth on edge. I’d not seen him fall, but I had a pretty good idea where the sound was coming from, and I knew immediately that Martin was in trouble.

  I scrambled over the rocks, yelling for the adults to come and help, even before I saw Martin. When I did, I thought I was going to faint. I’d expected to see blood—robots are designed to bleed—but he’d fallen onto a spur of rock, and it had gouged a hole in his side.

  What showed was nothing so crude as gears and rods, but tightly packed micro-servos, pseudo-organic tensors, and weaving throughout were the silver-gray threads of Oxted’s marvellous creation, the neurotronic web.

  Martin wasn’t moving, and the scream that had summoned me was now just a low moan. I looked back, but the adults were still sitting calmly around their picnic, unaware that anything had happened. So I yelled—quite a bit—until they got the idea that something serious had occurred, and I turned back to Martin.

  The web was still bright, which was a good sign; if the web lost its silver shimmer and turned gray, then it would be all over for Martin. But what to do? How do you help an injured robot? They don’t teach that in my village school. I decided to lift him out of the water a little—the saltiness couldn’t be good for him.

  It was hard work, but I’m fairly tough for my age, and I managed to haul him up far enough that the water could drain out of the wound. There was quite a bit of gray now, I couldn’t help noticing, but still a few sparkles.

  Then the adults arrived, all puffing and out of breath. Don and Suzie were completely useless; Suzie just sat down like she’d been sandbagged and went into shock, and Don tried to comfort her. So Mum and Dad had to carry Martin back along the beach to the car. Behind me I heard Suzie moan and mutter, and before you could say “Oxted’s web” there was a blazing row with Suzie blaming Don for not protecting their son, and Don saying it could be mended.

  We tried the doctor in Aber-double-l’s. He was an old man, near retirement I suppose, and though he’d converted to dual-practice (of course), you could see that he wasn’t really comfortable with robot patients. His hands were shaky, too, and that’s not good for a neurotronic web. The silver streaks were going grayer. So the doctor asked the inevitable.

  And that’s when Suzie really threw a wobbly.

  Backups.

  There weren’t any. At least, nothing from the last three years. And Doctor Evans didn’t want to risk taking a fresh backup at this time—his downloader was an old model, he said, and he wasn’t sure it could handle Martin’s data rate—there could be data corruption, even if there was still enough of a pattern to copy.…

  But Suzie wasn’t listening. She was just screaming at Don for neglecting Martin’s backups, and how he knew she wasn’t technical and he should have done them and he hated Martin and …

  Poor Martin. They got him fixed, but like I said, the last backup was three years old.…

  So Martin lost the last three years of his memory. A five-year-old mind in an eight-year-old’s body.

  Don and Suzie sent us separate Christmas cards last year. Martin wasn’t mentioned on either. I guess they sent him back to Oxted.

  The Uncanny Valley.

  Is that where I am, now?

  INTERVAL 2

  This is brilliant material, Tania, though I don’t suppose you appreciate my professional glee. You’re right about me being an archaeologist, but I’m a psychologist, too, and you can add anthropologist, to round out your picture of me. Yes, just one alien, doing all that.

  The truth is, we’re not a numerous race, nor do we have huge space vessels to courier us across the galaxy at FTL speeds. The universe is niggardly with the exotic forms of matter we need even to move at the speed of light, so six crew is about the maximum, and we split all the jobs between us.

  I had to pull strings to get this expedition to happen. The Directors—the leaders of my people—disliked the idea of sending a precious ship all the way to Dawn. The Dawn Civilization has been studied to death. We should be moving out—by which they mean moving in, toward the galactic center, where the stars are more numerous—in search of new life.

  And if we meet such life, I replied, how shall we introduce ourselves? Hello, we are the Old People, the Bored People, the Tired People. We have so little vigor, you see, Tania. I convinced them that a fresh study of the Dawn Civilization might teach us how to be young again.

  Perhaps I lied. Perhaps this expedition is all about my personal vanity and relief of ennui. I hope not. I need you to teach my race how to restore ourselves.

  Tuesday, October 26, 2049

  Michael and Annette had been waiting quietly outside my room; when I called a tentative hello they entered.

  They … shuffled. Heads slightly bowed, so they didn’t have to meet my eyes. Annette’s face was red and her eyes puffy—she’d been crying. Michael just looked totally hangdog and guilt-ridden. He broke the silence.

  “How are you?”

  “Not dead. Unfortunately.”

  “Ah.”

  And that was the confirmation. Not “How could you say such a thing?” or “Oh my darling little girl.” Just “Ah.” Shorter than “Oh, dear, now you know we’ve been lying to you all your life”—but it meant the same thing.

  “What do I call you now? Michael? Annette? Reverend Deeley? Mrs. Deeley?”

  “We were hoping you’d still call us Mum and Dad.”

  “But you’re not, are you?”

  “Perhaps not in the biological sense, no. But we’ve given you all our love, always. If we could have had a child, we couldn’t have loved her any more than we’ve loved you. I feel I am your dad, in every way that matters. And Mum, she feels the same way about you.”

  “You let me believe I was special. Human.”

  “You are special.…”

  “Just not human.”

  Annette looked up then, and she said her first words.

  “They send you on a course, you know. When you decide … You know. Oxted.”

  I could have said something to help her in her difficulty, but I was feeling hurt, and so I wanted to hurt them. So I kept silent and let her struggle to find some words.

  “It’s all about what to tell
your new child. They tell you it won’t work, unless you think of your new baby as human. You mustn’t think of it as a robot, they say, and you mustn’t tell it that it’s a robot, because if you do, it won’t develop properly, it won’t reach its best potential.”

  “That’s right, Tania,” added Michael. “After the first few weeks, we never thought of you as anything else. You were our little miracle, a real child in a barren world. As far as we could, we avoided anything that might break the spell.…”

  “That’s nonsense,” I blurted, wanting to puncture Michael’s lie. “What about my revisions? What about backups? You’re supposed to take a backup. Regular backups. Remember Mar-tin?”

  They looked at each other, and it was Michael who answered me.

  “Yes, I’d forgotten you were there when Martin was injured. Your mum and I never did take backups. It was a conscious choice. If we’d had a … a child of our own bodies”—Michael stumbled, trying to avoid the word “real”—“we’d not have been able to back her up. And so with you. If you’d been badly injured, we’d have lost you. Completely. If you’d died, part of us would die, too. Without the risk of loss, there cannot be genuine love.”

  Was that the vicar speaking, with a scholar’s reasoning? It sounded like something out of one of his sermons, crafted and pithy. And it must have made sense to Annette, because she was nodding agreement, but I didn’t understand it one little bit. To love something more, you safeguard it less?

  “Look, Tania. We know what’s happened has been a shock to you, and your mum and I are upset, too. But you’re part of the family…”

  Like the butler. Soames, the stupid, clumsy robot that still crushes ping-pong balls.

  “… and families survive far worse than this. We stay together. Nothing changes.”

  How’s that? Yesterday I was a girl. Rare and wonderful. Today, I’m a robot. A production-line pet, constructed to comfort two humans who can’t have a real child of their own.

  “Tania? Tania?”

  I realized I’d drifted off, my mind somewhere else. Without thinking, I replied, “Yes, Dad?”

  I didn’t mean to use that word. It wasn’t part of my plan.

  Oxted had made me too well, because then I cried.

  Monday, November 1, 2049

  And so, with those tears, I accepted the love of my mum and dad, and rejoined the family.

  I wish.

  That would have been a lovely fairy-tale ending. Like Pinocchio, I suppose. Could Walt Disney have foreseen the fate of his film? In many countries it had been re-rated Adults Only—some places it was banned. If it was watched at all, it was in secret, its theme too painful for most people to bear. I’d seen it, though. John had sent me a link to the TeraNet, and I’d followed it, guiltily, downloading and viewing it when Mum and Dad thought I was asleep. I thought it was rather ordinary, back then—just three weeks ago—but now I began to understand the unbearable poignancy.

  Impossible dreams. The toy that becomes a real child.

  Me.

  I know in my head there is just the glittering silver-gray of the neurotronic nexus. But all I can picture is ticking cogs and relays, some hybrid of computing dawn—Babbage and Colossus—miraculously shrunken to fit inside my head. And I dream that it’ll equally miraculously turn into the gray sponge of a real human brain. And then I’ll be truly human, and my parents will love me.

  They were trying so hard, Michael and Annette, to be my dad and my mum again. They’d hug me unexpectedly, and one of them would always be near me. Dad would try to coax me out of the house for a walk to the village pond. Mum would get me to help in the kitchen.

  Meanwhile Soames was currently banished to the attic, after I’d thrown a wobbly. It wasn’t a very good wobbly, as my heart wasn’t in it.

  My heart?

  Oh, well. Let it stand. I’m not going to change the way I write, just because it turns out now I’m a robot.

  Is that okay with you, Mister Zog?

  I hope you’re still reading this.

  I was dreading school.

  What did they know? Had Siân told everybody what had happened? She was hardly Miss Discreet—she didn’t have the empathy—but she was also the nearest thing to a friend I had, and I supposed I was hoping there was some fragment of First Law that would help me, even though I wasn’t technically entitled to First Law protection anymore.

  She was there, at the bus stop. Her back was to me, and she was talking to one of the other girls. Myra? Or Jemima? I couldn’t tell them apart. What couple could be so gauche as to buy twin robots? The word was that Myra/Jemima came from a family even wealthier than Siân’s—simply too much money to care what other people thought.

  Jemyra noticed me first—her eyes flicked momentarily in my direction—and Siân spotted the motion, turned, and gushed, “Oh, hi, Tania. I was just telling Myra here about our trip to London. I thought you’d drowned, you know—you were under water for so long. But they say time plays tricks in an emergency, and anyway that nice Beefeater pulled you out and gave you artificial resuscitation.”

  “Uh, yes.” Well what else do you say?

  “And they bandaged your leg and took you off to hospital, didn’t they, and I never got a chance to see you after that, but Daddy said he’d gone with you to make sure you got the best treatment money could buy, on account of it was our fault.”

  “Oh, thanks. I didn’t know. My dad will pay you back.…” But then I realized he probably couldn’t afford to.

  Jemyra’s eyes narrowed, and she looked at me in a rather predatory way.

  “What was it like? You know … drowning?”

  “I … I can’t really remember much.”

  “Really?” She didn’t believe me, but the less I said, the better.

  “I think I blacked out.”

  “Riiiight. And you were hurt, Siân said. Your leg.”

  “Nothing much. Just a scratch. It’s all healed now.”

  “That’s nice. Mind if I look? I’m thinking of studying medicine.”

  “It’s fine. There’s nothing to see.”

  Why was I lying? Why not just say I’m a robot and have done with it? I didn’t know, but I did know that I didn’t care for Jemyra’s nosiness. Or for Jemyra herself, for that matter.

  Jemyra’s eyes blinked slowly, and it made me think of a snake mesmerizing its prey, which I know is rubbish, but then she lost interest and went back to her sister. They started talking loudly about their own holiday in the Canaries, and I turned back to Siân.

  Siân was watching me. She was looking … awkward. She’s always so poised, and I wondered what was up. Did she know? Was that the end of our friendship, such as it was?

  “Tania…”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “Now, why would I ever be mad at you, Siân?”

  “Well … for telling her about the accident. I mean, like making it all a bit of an adventure. It was so awful at the time. I thought you were drowned, dead, and your leg was bleeding so. But now it’s all in the past, and you’re alive, and I hope you’re still my friend.”

  “I’m not mad at you. And I’m still your friend … if you want me to be?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And I’m sorry, too, Siân. For spoiling the day out. And putting your mum and dad to all that bother.”

  “No, Tania. Don’t even think about it.”

  So that was that. And then the bus came.

  But that wasn’t that.

  Well, Siân was fine. But Jemyra …

  It started as I made my way down the aisle to my seat on the bus. I stumbled—there was a bag sticking out that hadn’t been there a moment ago. I managed to catch myself, and looked round.

  “Careful,” murmured Jemyra, but her eyes were laughing at me.

  “You tripped me.…”

  “I don’t think so. Tin Pot.”

  “What?”

  “You heard. Tin Pot. Or maybe I’ll call you
Tin-ia.”

  “How … dare you!”

  Jemyra turned to her sister.

  “Listen to little Miss Ann Droid.”

  “I am not an android!” I yelled, and I was suddenly conscious of everybody on the bus looking at me.

  “Then prove it! That was a nasty wound you picked up, I know. Show me the scar, and I’ll believe you’re human.”

  “Why should I?”

  “You can’t. Because you’re not a girl. You’re a cheap fake! A stinking Mekker!”

  A Mekker. Me.

  I wanted to cry; I so nearly cried, but I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. I felt Siân’s hand on my shoulder, and her voice trying to calm the situation. But I was more conscious of Jemima and Myra gloating in front of me. I wanted to hit them, I realized. My hand had clenched into a fist, and I began to swing …

  Siân caught me, before I could land a blow.

  “Don’t, Tania! They’re not worth it. They’re just … pondlife.”

  I laughed, then. The picture was soooo perfect. Jemima and Myra as something green and slimy.

  I let Siân lead me away, to the back of the bus. Heads turned as we—I—passed and I realized with a sinking feeling that the word would be out. Just a rumor, but that would be enough.

  And it was.

  Everywhere I looked that day there’d be a little huddle of girls, and they’d whisper and point. Some would gasp and look scandalized, some would turn away guiltily.

  The teachers did nothing.

  Oh, they dished out punishments—impositions, detentions—because no one was paying any attention to their lessons, or doing any work. Even I picked up an imposition—five sides on “The LeClerc Solution”—because three times I failed to respond when the history mistress asked me a question. Even Siân got an impot for losing her temper and whispering “shut up” too loudly at two gossips during art—six sides on “Meditation on the Inside of a Table Tennis Ball as an Aid to Inner Tranquillity.”

  But while they punished the girls’ inattention, they did nothing to find out its cause. They didn’t care. And I was afraid to tell.