by Mindy Klasky
“Eugene?” I said.
He just shook his head and twinkled at me.
“Dammit, Bulinsky!” bellowed Greenwald’s voice in my ear. “You promised!”
Eugene yucked a couple of times. “No worries,” he said. “Watch. Watch!”
He pulled the dipper out of the mold and laid it on the devastated tablecloth. It was like a bizarre ballet set to the beat of the Shrewd News. While we watched, the crab spread was pulling itself together—literally—reshaping, remolding… It was kind of gross, actually. The little crab-shaped indentation on top even reappeared. It looked like it’d just scuttled out of the caterer’s van. The dipper, meanwhile, was getting cleaner by the second as if some tiny, invisible dogs were scarfing up the crab spread with invisible pink tongues. And the tablecloth—heck, I’ve seen stains disappear like that in commercials, but never in real life.
It took about five minutes, all told, before every trace of Eugene’s extraordinary grace were obliterated. He grinned harder and slipped the sparkling punch dipper back into the bowl. It was so quiet on that side of the room you could have heard a pin drop—except for the Shrewd News blaring from the quadro and Eugene yucking and snorting like there was no tomorrow.
It took the crowd about ten minutes to recover. It took me longer. I was watching them examine the table inch by inch when I felt a tug on my arm. Eugene was giving me a look that was one-quarter Captain Kirk and three-quarters Space Cadet. “This party’s dull. Let’s go have dinner.”
I let him steer me out to the car. I heard two “Nice stripe, Nina”s and one “God, where does she get those clothes?” on the way through. I didn’t even stop to snarl. They must’ve thought I was sick.
Euge took me to the top of the Prude, to this incredibly ritzy, incredibly expensive place with candlelight and real flowers and detoxed wine.
“Okay,” I said when we were sharing a stunning view of the city. “Two things: One, how’d you do that trick at the party; and two, how are we paying for dinner? My plastic is limp.”
“Second thing first,” said Eugene. “I’m paying—cash. And firstly—” He took off his glasses, set them on the table and rubbed the little red spots they left on his nose. “That wasn’t a trick. It was the nannies.”
The nannies again. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s hear it.”
He leaned toward me across the table. “You know my field of research is nanotechnology.”
“Y-ye-ah,” I said dubiously.
He sighed. “Nina, you don’t listen to me. Nanotechnology is the design and construction of tiny machines that perform programmed tasks.”
Slow dawn over Mount Zubin. “Like cleaning up after Hurricane Eugene?”
He nodded eagerly. “Exactly. Except that true nano-machines work on a molecular or even sub-atomic level and they’re programmed to fix things on that level: chromosomal damage, tissue damage, that sort of thing. They can even act as antibodies. My mega-nannies, on the other hand, are especially designed for bigger jobs. They’re programmed to fix tiny broken things, clean up messes, put things straight.”
“Wow!” I said. “That’s pretty impressive. So now you’re safe to have around. How do they work?”
He gave me a dubious look. “I’m not sure you’d understand, Nina.”
“Give me some credit, Bulinsky.”
“Well, okay, you might understand, I suppose. Um, let’s see… Okay, here. You’re an artist, right?”
I nodded solemnly.
“And you know, say, what the, um, Mona Lisa is supposed to look like, right? So if someone painted a mustache, say, on the Mona Lisa, you’d notice it right away. And if you had the talent—and I’m sure you do—you could fix it, am I right?”
I continued to nod.
“Well, the nannies don’t have talent, but they have programming that recognizes and memorizes default patterns—like the real Mona Lisa. Some of the patterns I preprogrammed, others are assimilated by the nannies as they—well, shop around, I guess you’d say—make comparisons and check it against their existing data. If for some reason a pattern is distorted, they return it to the control pattern—the default. That is, they fix it.”
I applauded. “Very good, Eugene.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “And just think of the applications. Homes, businesses, labs, hospitals, places that just have to be clean. Places humans and larger machines can’t clean.”
“Whoa,” I said. “To boldly go where no bot has gone before.”
“Very funny. But seriously, Nina, these little guys can do a lot more than what you saw them do tonight.”
“I didn’t see them do nada. I saw a crawling crab spread. What do these things look like?”
In answer, he pulled out his wallet and handed me a holopic.
I goggled at him. “You carry pictures of them in your wallet?”
“How else am I supposed to show you what they look like? I can’t exactly carry a microscope around in my pocket.”
“Okay.” I acquiesced and looked at the holo. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed. Other patrons glared at me, offended. I ignored them. “They’re… They look like—like bugs.”
“Well, I guess they are bugs, sort of. Programmable ones.”
“Geez, they’re ugly. Ugly, colorless bugs.”
“Beauty,” Eugene informed me, “is in the eye of the beholder.” He took the holo back and tucked in into his wallet. “I happen to really like that orange streak in your hair.”
“Thanks,” I said, “but it’s saffron. How do those little tiny things move stuff around the way they did at Garry’s?”
Eugene beamed (and I mean beamed) at me. “That’s one of the things that makes the Bulinsky Mega-Nanny special. When a job is too big for the individual nannies, they combine to form a group machine—a micro-machine or, well, sort of a nanny gestalt. They can also replicate themselves. The size of the replicant will depend on two things: First, the amount of convertible matter and/or energy around to fuel the replication process and, second, the size of the job at hand. Bigger job—bigger nannies. Of course, there is a limit to what they can do. Most macro-objects are beyond their abilities…unless I can crack the energy barrier.”
“Macro-objects,” I repeated. “You mean big stuff like the punch dipper.”
“Very good, Nina.” He seemed surprised.
I pointed a deep purple fingernail at his ostentatious nose. “Don’t patronize me… So how big is too big?”
He replied by very deliberately pressing the face of his wristcomp. Then, with a flourish, he set the crystal sugar bowl in the center of the table and made this “nothing-up-my-sleeves” gesture. “Observe,” he said and sprinkled pink fructose onto the table cloth.
I glanced quickly around to make sure there were no waiters watching. The last thing I wanted was to get tossed out of this place before I’d eaten. By the time my eyes returned to the fructose, it was already on its way back to the bowl.
“That’s it?” I asked. “Sugar crystals?”
“Well, no. Actually, they can handle grains of sand, dust balls, even individual sheets of paper. But those jobs take a pretty big gang and a lot of convertible matter.”
“Convertible matter?” I asked dubiously.
Euge waved a dinner roll at me. “Energy,” he said, and took a big bite out of it. “Food.”
My stomach gurgled. “Speaking of food,” I said. “Can we order?”
He sighed and nodded, popping the rest of the roll into his mouth.
Dinner was fantastic. Eugene let me babble on about the grant and residency I was up for, and my gallery opening next weekend and how I was going to take the art world by storm with my new stuff. He didn’t even seem to mind me making him come up to my studio to look at it. And he tried really hard to appreciate it too. I could tell. When I whisked the sheet off the main piece, he stared at it intently, then he wriggled his eyebrows, wrinkled his nose, took off his glasses, cleaned them on his jacket, put them back on, and puckered his lips. Then he
made a slow circuit of the piece.
“It’s, ah… It’s, ah…” he said.
“It’s a man,” I said. “Man in Anguish.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I can see that. But, it’s, ah...” He frowned. Waved his arms. “Wrong, somehow.”
“Wrong?” I snarled. “Wrong? A man who wears white socks with black silk pants is telling me my sculpture is wrong?”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I meant it—it’s out of balance…or…something…” He looked at me sheepishly. “Don’t listen to me. I don’t know anything about art.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“I’m sure it will really impress the Selection Committee,” he said soothingly, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Um, how about some coffee?”
I relented. Eugene had this way of looking like Clark Kent. I could never stay mad at him for more than a second or two. When I came out of the kitchenette with the coffee, he was sitting on the sofa in my small raised living room looking down into the studio. I scooted some magazines off the coffee table and put down the tray, then flipped a clay-caked sweatshirt off the sofa and sat down. I became aware of Eugene’s intense scrutiny. When I glanced at him, he looked away again, nervously nudging a baseball-sized dust bunny with his foot.
“Uh, Nina, I don’t mean to criticize your housekeeping, but—”
I was suddenly intensely embarrassed. “This place is a mess, isn’t it? I’m sorry. I guess I need a vacbot, but the damn things are so expensive. Besides, it’d choke on the stuff it’d have to clean up down there.” I nodded toward the studio.
Eugene was twinkling at me again. “You don’t need a vacbot. You need a nanny.”
I started to get all indignant, then realized what he was talking about. “You mean Bulinsky Mega-Nannies? Well, sure! That’d be great! I’d never have to think about housework again.” (Not that I gave it much thought now.)
Eugene touched his wristcomp. “There. They’re all yours,” he said. “At least this bunch.”
“That’s it? You just turned them loose?”
He nodded. “By the time we’re done with our coffee, this place will be clean as my lab. You won’t even have to wash that sweatshirt. You will have to put it away, though.”
I did, too, but I didn’t mind picking up the sty if the nannies were going to be doing all the slopping. And, bless their little default patterns, those nannies just seemed to know that tuna salad did not belong on the studio floor, nor cracker crumbs in the bathroom.
“So, what do I feed them?” I asked Eugene as he was on his way out the door.
“Nothing.”
“Then, what—batteries?”
Eugene yucked. “You can’t put batteries in something that small! Even a millimin flat-chip solenoid would be thousands of times too big for the largest nanny. Brighten up.”
“Brighten up, yourself,” I told him. “I just figured they had to have some kind of fuel.”
“They do. They subsist on a combination of energy sources. Solar and electromagnetic energy, which they can store—”
“A-ha!” I said, poking him. “Batteries!”
”Okay, okay—batteries. Plus, they intake the surplus organics—the garbage they clean up—and they consume any harmful bacteria they may find. It’s a bug eat bug world.” He yucked again.
I pushed him out the door.
I could tell right away that life with nannies was going to be great. It improved my standard of living a thousandfold in the first few hours. Didn’t improve my stable manners any. In fact, I think it even made me a bigger slob, knowing that thousands of tiny butlers were following me around straightening up after me. Talk about having your cake and eating it! I didn’t even have to worry about where the crumbs fell. I told myself that with the burden of mundane housekeeping lifted from my shoulders, I could easily turn out the several additional major pieces I needed for the gallery opening. (My big break!) Plus, I needed some “works in progress” to show the Grant Selection Committee on Wednesday.
I spent Sunday hopping art galleries for inspiration, then Monday morning I got down into my creative chakras and started a new piece. I unveiled “Fred” (Man in Anguish, to you) and let him look over my shoulder while I gave birth to his sibling. It was a smaller piece than Fred, or rather, “she” was. She was destined to be a ballerina (inspired by the Degas work I’d seen the day before), but with a classic Zubin twist. She was going to have five arms. I’d also seen a truly cream statue of Shiva yesterday (Lord of the Cosmic Dance and all that) and thought his six arms were just incredibly expressive of the rhythm and movement of the cosmos. But, of course, six arms were just so symmetrical, so ordinary. So my Cosmic Dancer would have five arms.
I put on some passionately energetic Russian music and worked in a frenzy, getting a big kick out of the way my team of nannies scarfed up every nibble of rubble that hit the floor. I mean, vacbots, look out! The place looked like a hospital operating room.
I had classes beginning at 1:00 pm, so at 12:30 I bid a reluctant farewell to Fred, Pavlova, and the dust patrol and marched off to satisfy state educational requirements. It was a long afternoon. All I could think about was my five-armed Pavlova and the GSC and the gallery opening and the dawn of Nina Zubin’s stellar career. It was 5:00 pm when I got home, and getting dark. I had an armful of backpack and groceries and had to turn the light on with my shoulder. (These low rent digs don’t have housecomps and sense-switches to turn them on for you.)
“I’m home!” I announced to my menagerie and turned to greet them. I stopped dead in my tracks. My pack and groceries thumped as they hit the floor. “Oh, my God,” I said and moved zombie-like toward the studio.
I couldn’t believe it. Instead of a Man in Anguish and a Cosmic Dancer, I had Two Men in Anguish and a Sculptor in Confusion. I came slowly down the steps, staring. Fred II was an exact duplicate of Fred I in every way but size. He was even casting his anguished gaze in the same direction.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a bit of conversation played back. Something about nannies and artists and mustachioed Mona Lisas. I heard Eugene’s voice saying, “Nannies don’t have talent…” Fast forward. There it was—that bit about “recognizing and memorizing default patterns.”
I stewed. Maybe I should’ve been flattered—the nannies had evidently recognized Big Fred as a “default pattern” and given me Little Fred. Of course, that also meant that Pavlova had looked somehow distorted to them. All in all, they cost me a morning’s inspired work. I swore violently. I wondered if nannies could hear. Eugene hadn’t said so. I continued to swear anyway. There was nothing to do but start over again. I got out some fresh clay, covered the Freds, and turned on the Russian music. It was tough, but I managed to recapture my inspiration.
After many intense hours of pounding, molding, weeping and cursing, I had a Cosmic Dancer that surpassed my first attempt. I quickly threw a sheet over her to keep the nannies from getting ideas. Then I ate a late dinner and called Eugene to give him a hard time about his nannies’ antics. He wasn’t home, so I left a saucy, Zubinesque message about naughty nannies on his vucorder.
I overslept the next morning, barely made it to my mid-morning classes, and raced home to start work on my next piece. I already knew what it was going to be—a mime. A mime with a dagger. A mime into crime. I would call it Deadly Silence, and it would knock the Committee’s socks off. When I finished up at about 3:00 am, I just flopped onto the sofa and stared at him for a moment. He was beautiful: Posed in that dainty, mime arabesque; his head tilted to one side; his little peaked hat askew; the dagger drawn up to his left cheek while crazed eyes stared over it at the viewer. Gave me chills.
I got out my old Panasonic Discam and circled him slowly, shooting him from every angle. I noticed that the nannies were at work on the little pile of scrapings by his pedestal.
“Good nannies,” I said. “Have this place finessed by ten hundred hours, got it?”
I covered Petrucchio and flopped back ont
o the sofa.
I overslept again. Seriously, this time. I woke up at 9:35. The Grant Selection Committee was due at 10:00. I literally threw myself into the shower, dressed like a madwoman (there are those who say I always dress like a madwoman), and gobbled some breakfast. Thank Eugene, I didn’t have to clean up the crumbs. With two minutes left, I brewed coffee and raked my hair.
The door chime sounded promptly at 10:00 as the Committee stepped onto my front porch. I flatter myself that I was all poise and dignity when I let them in. There were three of them, and they were escorted by my art professor and mentor, Professor Frewer. I smiled at him and he smiled back, then introduced me to his colleagues—the Drs. Midori Hirasuna and Ford Goodwin and artist Jeff Ripley.
I was in love. Midori Hirasuna was everything I wanted to be: Sleek, shining, stylish, stunning—all those great “S” words. I knew she was an artist of great style, too, and desperately wanted her to like my stuff.
Coffee and interview came first. I answered questions, smiled a lot and tried to come across sensitive, quirky, and artistic. Then came the unveiling. I went to Big Fred first, slipped the sheet from his gaunt frame and announced, “I call this one Man in Anguish.”
“Ah, ha,” said Professor Frewer. He puckered his lips and looked professorial. I glanced at Professor Hirasuna. She was scribbling notes, a very tiny frown between her perfect brows. Ripley nodded. Goodwin had a poker face.
“Do you have anything else, Nina?” asked Professor Frewer.
“Yessir,” I said and turned to Pavlova’s platform. “This is Cosmic Dancer.” I pulled her cover, watching their faces. There was no expression on any of them.