RobotWorld

by Ray Verola

  Marisa sat down and said, “So great to have you here.” She flashed a smile that seemed strange to Taylor because one corner of her mouth spasmed markedly three or four times in rapid succession. “Don’t forget my homemade barbeque sauce for the steak,” she said. “It adds an extra zing.”

  “Can’t wait to try it,” Taylor said, as he reached for the white bowl and spooned some sauce on his steak. He attacked the food with gusto. “This is fantastic.” He then yawned. “Excuse me. Sleep’s been hard to come by in the short time I’ve been living on the street.” He breathed in deeply. “I’m certainly not bored by the company.” The steak with barbeque sauce had the same vaguely metallic taste as the soup, but again, he wasn’t going to complain.

  The eyes of Regan and Marisa glued on him as the three of them ate made him uncomfortable. He’d expected them to ask questions or maybe make small talk, but they had remained almost silent. Just as he was about to ask them for the specific reasons as to why they felt the calling to do such good work, his eyes started to close. He fought the feeling and was embarrassed. “Wow, I guess I’m more tired than I realized. Sorry.”

  “Do you want to lie down on the sofa?” Regan suggested. “We’ve got extra pillows and a blanket. We can keep your dinner warm.”

  Taylor said, “That won’t be necess . . .” His eyes rolled back in his head, and he keeled over to one side, with Regan catching him before he hit the floor.

  ***

  Regan eased the unconscious Taylor to the carpet. “He’s out cold. In dreamland. He should be out for two hours at least. Right?”

  “Absolutely,” Marisa said. “I followed the knockout stuff directions to a tee.”

  “You get the rug. I’ll get the cart.”

  He sprinted to the bedroom, while she opened a closet door and struggled to remove a furled-up rug that was at least a foot taller than her height. She removed two pieces of string from the rug and spread it out on the floor next to the prone Taylor. The orange-colored rug was long enough and wide enough for Taylor to be tightly wrapped in it without him showing. She caught her breath and waited for her husband.

  Regan raced out of the bedroom seconds later, pushing a two-wheeled, heavy-duty hand truck he’d borrowed from his father who was in the moving business. Regan had told his dad he was moving some furniture around the more upscale apartment where he and Marisa actually lived. His father had informed him that the hand truck could handle up to nine hundred pounds. Regan had remarked to Marisa that he was sure Taylor wrapped in a rug would weigh much less.

  “This is the craziest thing ever,” Marisa said, as she shook her head.

  “Stop your grousing and help me lift him.”

  Regan grabbed Taylor’s shirt at both shoulders, as she took hold of both feet.

  “My God,” Marisa said, “he weighs a ton.”

  Regan grunted, then said, “Don’t exaggerate.”

  With much effort, they lifted and moved him to one end of the rug. Then they rolled him, wrapping the rug around him.

  “It looks like a giant cigar,” Marisa said. “The craziest thing ever.”

  Regan grabbed a cylinder of heavy shipping packaging tape and started taping around the rug. “This should keep him firmly in place.” Beads of sweat dripped off his forehead as he labored for two or three minutes securing the rug while Marisa stood off to the side periodically shaking her head.

  Regan slammed the tape cylinder on the dining table. “Grab one end,” he shouted. “Let’s get him on the cart.” They strained to lift Taylor, wrapped in the rug, onto the cart. Regan anchored the rug into place with the hand truck’s four heavy straps.

  “This is going just as planned,” Regan said. “Right on schedule.”

  She said nothing.

  “Okay, Marisa. I got the cart ready to go. You get the freight elevator, and make sure the coast is clear.”

  She opened the front door. No one in the hall. The freight elevator was only thirty feet from their apartment. She walked to the elevator and pressed the down button.

  As soon as the elevator door opened, she called to Regan in a hushed tone, and he came out of the apartment into the empty hall, pushing the hand truck. They got on the elevator, and he pressed the button for the underground parking garage.

  The plan was to transport Taylor to a deserted, dead-end alley near Buzzard’s Point, deposit him in the middle of the road, and run him over with their PTV to make it look like an accident. It would be a case of yet another homeless man aimlessly wandering about in the dark under the influence of Serenity, in the wrong place at the wrong time, the unfortunate victim of a hit-and-run accident.

  In the underground garage, they loaded the rug into the trunk of the PTV. They drove to the dark, deserted alley near the Point and positioned the rug with the unconscious Taylor in it squarely in the middle of the road. Regan cut the tape with a box cutter, unrolled Taylor from the rug, and then tossed the rug into the trunk.

  Regan and Marisa returned to their PTV and, with Regan at the wheel, drove to the dead-end side of the alley. Regan turned off the headlights and then the motor.

  The silence in the PTV coupled with the darkness around them was eerie.

  They couldn’t see two feet in front of them, much less the body lying in the middle of the road, approximately fifty yards from where they were parked.

  “Why did you turn off the motor?” she asked.

  “This is it. The moment of decision. We kill this guy and our lives change forever.”

  “Are we sure we want to go through with it?” Marisa asked.

  “It’s our only way out,” Regan answered.

  They looked at each other. Regan pressed the ignition button, then turned on the headlights.

  “Almost done,” he said.

  30

  Marisa gasped as she looked out the windshield. “He just moved!”

  “No way,” Regan said. “You saw an optical illusion when I turned on the headlights. The stuff we gave him had to put him out for at least two hours.”

  Taylor held a hand high. “Help, help,” he yelled, loudly enough for them to hear.

  “What was that?” Marisa shrieked. “An optical and auditory illusion?”

  “Damn this shit,” Regan said. “Did you put the right amount of stuff in his food?”

  “Of course I did. I used all the sedative in the bag. Followed the directions to the letter. Don’t blame me.”

  “He can’t get to his feet. He’s a sitting duck. A grape to be squashed. Nothing’s changed.”

  “We can’t run him over, now that he’s conscious.”

  “Why not?” Regan pressed the manual drive button on the dashboard. “Hold on!”

  He floored the power pedal and headed straight for Taylor.

  Marisa closed her eyes and screamed.

  Regan saw Taylor attempt to struggle to his feet. Right before impact, Regan closed his eyes.

  He expected to hear the thud of Taylor bouncing off his vehicle. PTVs ran with a soft purr that was almost undetectable. Outside of Marisa’s scream, he’d heard nothing. He pressed the brake pedal hard with his right foot, and the PTV came to an abrupt stop at the corner. His eyes flew open as he looked in the rearview mirror. “Did I miss him?” There was no lifeless body in the middle of the street. “What the fuck?”

  Marisa opened her eyes and looked out the back window. “What the hell happened?”

  Regan looked back too. “I think I missed him.”

  “You couldn’t have missed him. You had to knock him clear off the street and beyond the city border with as fast as we were going.”

  “No. I didn’t hear him hit the PTV. He got away.”

  Neither one of them could see any evidence of Taylor in the blackness behind them.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Marisa insisted. “I told you
we’re not murderers.”

  Regan punched the steering wheel with his right hand. “We gotta decide what to do. He’s back there somewhere.”

  “What we need to do is get the hell out of here. If this Taylor guy recognized our PTV, he might be on his wrist computer right now calling the police. If they get here and we’re here, we’re screwed. If we’re not here, it’s just the word of a strung-out Serenity addict against ours.”

  “The powers that be will not be happy.”

  In the distance, they heard a high-pitched siren.

  “It’s the cops, dammit,” Marisa said. “Let’s get outta here.”

  “There’re always sirens in this part of town. They ain’t coming here.”

  “We can’t chance it, Regan. We need to get the hell out of here—now.”

  He grasped the steering wheel with both hands so hard that his knuckles turned the whitest of white—and he floored the power pedal.

  As they headed back to their apartment, Regan said, “We’re going to get a call tonight asking for results.”

  “Madness, just madness,” Marisa grumbled.

  Not another word was spoken during the rest of the trip.

  31

  Taylor saw the rear lights of the PTV turn bright red as it came to a sudden stop at the corner, then turn right and disappear into the night. He strained to catch his breath as he braced himself against a garage door and struggled to his feet in the dark.

  How could the driver not have seen me?

  And then it hit him: this was no accident.

  Going blank at dinner after eating that funny-tasting food, waking up in the middle of a road and not knowing how he got there, then recognizing the distinctive custom grille of the Aguilar PTV that had tried to run him over. The red PTV had to have been parked on the dead-end side of the road all along.

  The conclusion was unmistakable: his two new friends had drugged him, left him in the middle of the road, and tried to kill him tonight. Why? They had seemed like such good people.

  The mental fog he’d been in started to dissipate. I better get out of here in case they come back.

  A driving rainstorm had popped up. The streets were almost empty. Taylor found the rain refreshing, and it helped him revive. He wasn’t far from his spot on the Point. Only five or six blocks at most. Just put one foot in front of the other and get back home. He laughed to himself, then almost started crying, realizing he’d thought of his spot under the bridge as home.

  The left side of his neck and his right arm burned like hot coals. He could feel dried blood over a cut above his right eye, and his left cheek felt like he’d been scratched by the paws of a vicious, misbehaving house cat. He stumbled forward but soon began walking normally, while repeatedly looking over his shoulder to make sure the red PTV didn’t reappear. With each step he took, he got angrier and angrier. The anger was directed at himself. He’d gotten himself into this mess that his life had become. He’d even admitted his personal responsibility with his recent words to Austin and the Aguilars. But on this walk, the unmistakable feeling that he’d gotten himself here—and it would have to be himself alone to get out of this tailspin—really sunk in. Taylor stopped his walking, closed his eyes for a long five seconds, breathed in deeply, and resolved, once again, to get his life straightened out. With eyes still closed, he raised his head to the heavens, extended his arms out to each side as far as he could, opened his mouth wide, and swallowed what seemed to be a half-liter of rainwater. I can’t fail this time.

  He exhaled a sigh of relief when he got within a block of his spot under the bridge. The distance from the alley and the time that had passed made the return of the red PTV unlikely. The bridge where he’d been living for the past few days never looked as good as when he walked around a curve and saw his bedroll. As the rain poured straight down in sheets, Austin and two of Taylor’s neighbors, Errol and Max, approached him. Taylor didn’t know much about Errol and Max, only that they were big guys who seemed to be decent and were in the same homeless boat as he was. Both had given Taylor a few protein bars since he’d taken up residence at the Point. Errol grabbed him by one arm as Max grasped the other. They helped him to a nearby ledge under a streetlight that provided a dim, yellowish glow on the proceedings. An overhang shielded them from the rain.

  “What happened to you?” Austin asked.

  “You’re never going to believe it, Mr. Mayor,” Taylor said, as rainwater dripped off his face.

  “Hold the story. I’ll get my first aid kit and be back as quick as I can.” Austin picked up a stray piece of cardboard to act as an umbrella and dashed away.

  In less than two minutes, Austin was back. He dabbed the left side of Taylor’s face with an iodine cotton ball. Taylor grimaced in pain. “Okay,” Austin said, still breathing laboriously after his running, “clue us in as to what happened.”

  Taylor related meeting the Aguilars, accepting their dinner invitation, and the incident in the alley with what was most probably their red PTV.

  “I’ve never heard of the Aguilars,” Austin said. “You should have checked with me before accepting their invite. I’ll bet they were individuals sent by people who wanted to kill you.”

  “I would have mentioned the dinner situation to you, Austin. But I didn’t see you, Errol, or Max in the short time between the invitation and tonight. I tried to include you guys for dinner, but the couple said they only help one person at a time.” Taylor took a long breath. “The Aguilars didn’t seem like killers. Assuming you’re right about what they were trying to do, Austin, it’s clear I need to move from my spot. You were on target in predicting someone would be after me sooner rather than later.”

  Austin maintained a serious expression as he continued to work on the wounds to Taylor’s face and arms. “I hate being right all the time.” He took a step back. “You’ll live. Your cuts will heal up just fine. You should have no scars. At least not physical ones.”

  “Thanks, man. I think I’ll eventually get over the mental trauma of tonight too.”

  Errol and Max stood off to the side and said nothing. Typical for them, as they were men of few words.

  “It would be problematic for you to move from here to another place on the street and not be discovered,” Austin said. “Maybe we can find a way to keep you hidden without having you simply move around.”

  “I’m willing to consider all options regarding safety,” Taylor said. “But I’ve got to get my life right, get my mind right. And the first thing I must do is kick the Serenity habit. Serenity is so destructive. It’s got to go. Cold turkey. No matter how hard it might be to get it done. Tonight, I feel I’ve been given a new lease on life. Almost like being spared has given me a new life. The best thing I can do with this new life is fight the biggest wrong I know—this infernal government-robot complex that is doing so much harm. I can’t fight them with weapons because the government has all the weapons. I’ll have to fight them with the only tools I have at my disposal—words and ideas. My personal safety be damned.”

  “Remember what you told me the first day you were here about sticking your neck out and getting your head chopped off?” Austin asked. “Are you sure about putting yourself on the line like this?”

  “I’m positive,” Taylor replied.

  Austin said, “Then you have a worthy goal, and I’m willing to help you in any way I can. I’m sure Errol and Max will help out too.”

  Errol and Max both nodded.

  Errol said, “Austin has helped us both in surviving down here. I’m more than willing to return the favor by pitching in to help someone whenever he says so.”

  “Me too,” said Max.

  “Thanks, guys,” Taylor said. “I’m touched. I better shut up now before I start bawling.”

  “You know that kicking Serenity requires a five-day complete abstention period that can be very tough,” Austin said. “
Going cold turkey could be a monster of a situation. I’ve seen it.”

  “But sometimes the five-day period is easy,” Taylor said. “Hard or easy, it starts tomorrow.”

  Austin looked in the direction of Errol and Max. “If you guys don’t mind, I think it would be best for you to sleep in shifts tonight.”

  “Good idea,” Errol said.

  “I don’t think there’ll be any trouble the rest of the night,” Austin continued. “But better to be safe than sorry.” He refocused his attention to Taylor. “I’ll be by early tomorrow morning with breakfast. We can strategize further then. For now, get into some dry clothes and get some sleep.”

  Taylor said, “Thanks, Austin.”

  Soon after Austin left, Taylor stretched out on his bedroll and closed his eyes. He’d try one last time to reconnect with an old friend. He mentally called the name George. To his surprise, an answer came. I’m here.

  Taylor, eyes still closed, smiled. He took a deep breath, breathing free and clear, and fell asleep instantly, sleeping soundly through the night for the first time in a long time.

  32

  Later that night, the communication devices buzzed at the Aguilar apartment.

  “Don’t answer it,” Marisa said to Regan.

  “I’ve got to answer it. We won’t be able to dodge them. I’ll be honest. We tried, gave it our best effort, and failed. I’ll talk us out of this mess.”

  “You’ll talk us into a bigger mess. Please, Regan, don’t pick up. Let’s get back to our real apartment, pack some stuff, and run.”

  She threw up her hands, then left the room as Regan reached for the earpiece.

  What sounded like a firm male voice, obviously altered by a computerized voice changer, said, “Talk to me.”

  “Sir,” Regan said, “a little bump in the road. We had a good plan, but sorry to say the target got away.”

  Silence from the other end.

  “We are prepared,” Regan said, “to carry out the task still—or possibly some other task you would deem appropriate. Let me explain what happened tonight . . .”