The Extraordinary Colors of Auden Dare

by Zillah Bethell

“You sure?”

  “I … don’t … think so. Nope. Definitely not.”

  Again, I was confused. A true machine would instantly know and would be able to instantly tell you. That’s how computers work. There’s a “Yes.” There’s a “No.” And nothing in between. Definitely no “Er.” … So why the element of doubt in its “voice”? Paragon wandered away from us, peering about at some of the rubbish still left in the grass, picking it up and dropping it with its “hands.” I turned to Vivi, who was clearly thinking the same things.

  “There’s a thing called ‘fuzzy logic,’” she said. “I read about it once. It’s where you give a computer a chance of getting things wrong. It’s a way of making a computer’s brain more like a human brain.”

  “What’s the point in that?” I asked. It didn’t make much sense to me.

  She shrugged.

  “So even though it’s acting like it’s human … it’s still just a robot.”

  She shrugged again.

  I led Paragon into the house. I took it into the sitting room and the kitchen and the utility room.

  “You’re certain you’ve never been here before?” Perhaps—at some point—the fuzzy logic might turn in my favor and reveal the truth.

  “Nope. I do not recall ever having been here before. In fact … I do not recall ever having been anywhere before.” He stressed the “anywhere” perfectly. “This is the first place I have ever been.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s been reprogrammed,” Vivi said somewhere behind me. “Your uncle must have wiped his memory before putting him down below the shed.”

  “And you’ve never heard of Jonah Bloom?” I asked again.

  “Nope. No idea. I know the tale of Jonah and the whale. Do you know it?”

  I sighed. “No. I don’t know it and, to be honest, I don’t care. What about the rainbow machine? Have you any idea where the battery for the rainbow machine is hidden?”

  “Sorry, Audendare … I don’t know anything about a rainbow machine. I can tell you how rainbows are made—”

  “No.”

  Paragon straightened again, as if it was slightly taken aback. “O-kay.” It turned to look at Vivi and, even though it didn’t have eyebrows, it appeared to raise them.

  I marched over to Paragon and punched the button that started it up in the first place. The electric hum died along with the flashing lights, and the machine stopped dead still where it stood.

  “What did you do that for?” Vivi frowned.

  “Look. It doesn’t know anything. It hasn’t got a clue. I don’t know why Uncle Jonah even bothered to build it. I mean, it doesn’t serve any purpose.”

  “Just because he doesn’t know what his purpose is doesn’t mean he hasn’t got one.”

  “And will you please stop referring to it as ‘he.’ It’s a thing. Not a person. It’s a load of wire and metal acting like it’s human. That’s all. Just a slightly more advanced lawn mower or something. Stop calling it a ‘he.’”

  Vivi went quiet. We both stood there staring at the robot, stuck there completely still, halfway through a movement.

  “Anyway,” Vivi spoke quietly. “Why does it have to have a purpose? Is that the reason why everything exists? Because it’s useful? And if it’s just a machine, why did you shake its hand?”

  “I was confused for a second. I wasn’t thinking properly.”

  “Well, what are you going to do about him? You can’t just leave him here in the middle of your utility room. Your mother will be back from work later and I don’t think she’ll be all that pleased to see a robot blocking the back door.”

  Mum. I thought for a second. Should I tell her about Paragon? What would she say? She would probably say that we should let the authorities know. Then it would be taken away. And even though it said that it knew nothing about a rainbow machine or its power source, I wasn’t so sure. Perhaps it had orders from my uncle to hold back on certain pieces of information and not to reveal them for some reason. Perhaps, even though it had—according to Vivi—been reprogrammed, it might have the information still deeply scratched somewhere into its memory bank. All I knew was that if the authorities took this … thing … away, I would never find the battery and I would never get the rainbow machine to work.

  “We’d better take it back underground. For now,” I said. “I don’t think we should tell anyone about this.”

  “No,” Vivi agreed. “But I was thinking…”

  “What?”

  “Perhaps it’s true that he has never been here—to this house—before. I mean, it’s unlikely that Dr. Bloom actually built him here.”

  “It,” I corrected her. “It’s a thing.”

  She ignored me. “But perhaps he might remember another place. If we were to take him places he might have a memory of, then it’s not impossible he might have some idea of why he was built. Yes?”

  “Yes. I suppose.” I stopped and thought. “Hold on, you’re not suggesting we take it to Uncle Jonah’s rooms in Trinity, are you?”

  “Well … ideally, yes.”

  “But … look at it. It’s massive. How are we meant to get it there?”

  She thought for a minute. “Well, okay. You’re right. Perhaps instead we could show him Cambridge from a distance. If we go up one of the hills not far from here, we might be able to show him the city, and hopefully he’ll remember why he was built.”

  “Yes. But tomorrow. Not now. Now I think it’d better go back into its room under the shed.” I hit the on switch and the robot seemed to immediately continue the movement it had started before I’d turned it off.

  “Hi again, Audendare and Vivirookmini. How are you both?”

  “You’re going back underground,” I said.

  “Hmm?”

  “You heard.”

  Vivi stepped toward Paragon. “We’ll come back and see you tomorrow. We’re going to take you out and see if we can work out what your purpose is.”

  “‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

  “Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.’”

  “Poetry?” asked Vivi.

  “Shakespeare,” replied Paragon.

  “Will you please pack it in with the poetry!” I sighed. “And get yourself back into the shed. Now.”

  The machine made its way without complaint back to the hidden room under the garden.

  “You promise you will return tomorrow?” it said in the gloom of the chamber, and it almost sounded pitiful. “I think I would like it if you were to help me find what it was I was built for. That sounds good. And in exchange perhaps I could—”

  “Yes, yes,” I said dismissively, and punched the button one more time.

  CHAPTER 12

  PURPOSE

  “Good morning, Audendare.”

  “Look … er…”

  “Paragon.”

  “Yes. Paragon.” Giving a thing a name felt funny. “Look, my name isn’t Audendare.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No. It’s Auden.”

  “Oh, I see.” It nodded its head like it understood. “Your first name is Auden and your last name is Dare. Am I right?”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “That makes sense.” It moved its head closer as if it was sharing a secret with me. “To be honest … I did think that Audendare was quite an unusual name. And I suppose Vivirookmimi’s name is really Vivi.…” It paused for a second. “Rookmini. Yes? Two separate names again?”

  “Yes.” I was having a conversation with a tin can.

  Paragon crawled up the ladder and stepped back out onto the patchy lawn, where Vivi greeted it like it was a long-lost uncle or something.

  “So?” it said. “What’s the plan?”

  “Well,” Vivi began, “I think that it might be a good idea to just see if it becomes obvious what you were constructed for.”

  “And to try to see if you really do know anything about the rainbow machine and how to work it,” I added quickly. T
hat, to me, was much more important than finding out what this glorified wheelbarrow was made for. If Uncle Jonah had really found a way of fixing my problem, then obviously I was keen to try it out. After all, Paragon was probably just a little side project for Jonah—a hobby—like the way some people rebuild old cars or weave willow baskets or something. No, Paragon itself wasn’t important in my eyes (so to speak!). It was what it might know or what it might be able to do that was exciting to me.

  You see, I know I rather go on about how it doesn’t matter not being able to see color, and how it makes me special in a way. Like I’m a superhero. And sometimes I really believe that. When I’m happy and things are going right, I feel like it’s kind of a good thing not to be able to know the difference between red and green. I can persuade myself that everything is simplified and, in a sense, color is just another complication. Those are the good days.

  But there are many other times when I don’t feel like that at all. When all I can think is how incomplete I actually am. Those are the bad days. The days I feel depressed or angry. Sometimes the anger slips out and I might punch my pillow or kick a wall. And sometimes the anger goes in—and that’s a lot worse.

  I don’t like those days.

  “And how are we going to do that?” Paragon replied, its “head” tilted a bit.

  “Vivi thinks we should go for a walk,” I moaned.

  “A walk?”

  “I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”

  Vivi stuck her tongue out at me. “Yes. Just to see if it gets you thinking. Try to tease out what it is you were designed for.”

  “And if you know about the rainbow machine,” I repeated quickly.

  “O-kay! Let’s get going!” It started to walk.

  “Hang on, hang on.” I stuck my hand up in front of its “chest” and it stopped. “We can’t exactly take you out looking like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like that. Like a robot. Everyone will be staring at you. Then the authorities will probably take you away from us.”

  “Yes. We can’t risk some of the Scoot drones or the Ariel drones spotting you, too,” added Vivi.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t be too worried about any drones,” said Paragon. “I can take care of them.”

  “You can take care of them?”

  “Yep.”

  “How?”

  “Whoever it was that built me gave me an EMD—that’s an electromagnetic disabler. I can block any electronic device within two hundred meters. Any drones that pass by will simply stop functioning correctly. So don’t you worry about drones.”

  Both Vivi and I glanced down at our QWERTYs at exactly the same time. I don’t know about Vivi’s, but mine certainly wasn’t working properly.

  “Yes, well, that’s good news about the drones,” Vivi said, “but we also have to worry about any people seeing you.”

  “So? What do you suggest, Vivi…” He paused. “Rookmini?”

  “Ta-da!” She pulled the long dirty-looking trench coat with the big buckled belt from behind her back. “This used to belong to one of the professors at Trinity. He didn’t want it anymore so he gave it to my mother to use. That and…” She pulled her other hand from behind her back. “This!” It was a hat. A large, wide-brimmed thing that would shade your eyes from even the sunniest of suns. “I thought you could wear them.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t believe we were about to put clothes on a walking tumble dryer.

  “I … don’t think I’m designed to wear clothes,” Paragon said, looking from Vivi to me then back again. “Am I?”

  “No. You’re not,” I answered. “You’re just a machine. You’re not human.”

  “Oh.”

  Was it just me or did it sound hurt?

  And was it just me or did I feel a bit guilty?

  “Anyway.” Vivi came forward and held the coat and the hat out to Paragon. “We can’t go out without you wearing something, so…”

  Paragon took the clothes from her. It dropped the hat on the floor and seemed to throw the coat around itself. Considering it had never once before put a coat on, it did so slickly with not even a single struggle around the shoulders. I was impressed.

  Then it bent to the ground and kind of flicked the hat, letting it roll itself along the length of its outstretched right arm, bouncing it up off the shoulder and onto the head, where it fell softly and securely.

  “Wow.” Vivi was openmouthed.

  “Cool,” I found myself saying with a smile on my face.

  Paragon pulled the hat down gently. “Any good? How’s it look?”

  “Suits you,” Vivi said, before popping together the buttons on the coat and pulling the belt tightly around Paragon’s torso. “You look good.”

  *   *   *

  We walked across the patchy fields of wheat that bent in the slight, warm breeze, past the tall pyramid-shaped irrigation pylons, and along the unkempt, unused tarmac roads. Both Vivi and I thought it best to avoid people if we could—even dressed in clothes, Paragon looked a bit odd and we were sure to get the occasional funny glance. So we headed out away from the city and into the countryside.

  “Perhaps you were designed to fix the roads,” I said after almost twisting an ankle in one of the many potholes that littered the lane along which we were walking. “And even if you weren’t, they need to design something to fix the roads.”

  “Nope,” Paragon answered. “Definitely not fixing roads. That’s not me. I feel I have a greater purpose than that.”

  “You don’t feel anything,” I said, slightly irritated once again by the way this machine was pretending to be human. “You just think you feel. Well, actually, you don’t even think. You just turn switches on and off in your computer brain. That’s all. It’s just combinations of switches and pistons and stuff.”

  Paragon stopped walking and turned to face me. “I have to say, Auden, you really are horribly analytical.”

  “What?”

  “Well,” it continued, “you seem intent on reducing everything to its basic, unimaginative, constituent parts.”

  “Hold on, are you—”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Vivi interrupted, grabbing Paragon by its sleeve. “He’s just a miseryguts. Come on.”

  They both walked off, leaving me standing alone in the middle of my pothole.

  *   *   *

  The countryside around Cambridge is mostly flat and even—a bit like somebody has taken a massive rolling pin to it, or stamped their huge boot across it—with only the occasional hill or valley, and as the morning eased on, we slowly made our way toward one of the hills topped with a spiky crown of trees.

  At one point, a pair of Ariel drones drifted by above us, their usually blinking eyes dull and dead, before carrying on into the distance.

  “Did they see us?” said Vivi.

  “Nope. They didn’t see a thing,” Paragon replied. “Trust me.”

  The hill looked quite gentle from the lane and we climbed over the rotten stile into the field of lifeless grass and made our way toward the gritty path that wound its way upward.

  Halfway up, we stopped and turned around to look at the spread of the land below.

  “Okay.” Vivi struggled to catch her breath. “So … in the distance there … you can see Cambridge. Some of those spires belong to the colleges of the university. Which was where Dr. Jonah Bloom worked—the man who built you. He was a fellow at Trinity College…?” She looked at the machine in the hope something might click. But no. There was nothing. “Okay, then. All around us you can see the fields. Some growing the corn and wheat to make food with—those are the ones with the irrigation pylons. Other fields are growing succulents and cactuses … cacti … er…”

  “Cacti. Cactuses. Either one’s fine,” confirmed Paragon.

  “Okay. So some of the fields are growing succulents and cacti because they don’t require much water and people can buy them to have in their houses. Nobody buys real flowers anymore.�
� She shielded her eyes against the sun and pointed into the distance. I didn’t even bother looking. When it’s particularly sunny everything just seems to blur.

  “Over there you can see transportable water storage units. Next to them you can see the recycling plant. Just in the distance on that side there are grain distribution centers—those warehouse buildings just there—can you see? And if you really squint, you can just about make out the thin line of where the river Cam used to flow. It’s not much now, of course.” She looked up at Paragon, who was scanning the whole of the horizon. “Now, does any of that mean anything to you?”

  “Nope.” It turned its head and looked slightly farther up the hill. “Although…” It stumped up the hill toward a large patch of weeds and grabbed one of the stalky plants, yanking it out of the ground so that its roots dangled uselessly and clods of earth dropped onto the dry path. Paragon came back down and held the plant up toward us.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you know what this is?” it asked back.

  “Er, no,” I replied as sarcastically as I could manage. “I don’t think so.”

  “Hmm. Sarcasm. Nice.” Paragon gave the long stem with the pointy flower at the top a bit of a shake. “This is verbascum thapsus. Also known as Aaron’s Rod. Comes from the family scrophulariaceae. Biennial. Native to Britain although quite uncommon in both Scotland and Ireland. Generally grows on wasteland—like this. Was once used to treat bronchial difficulties. People would crush it up and put it in a pipe to smoke. Herbal medicine.”

  It stood there like it was waiting for one of us to comment. It was me who broke the silence.

  “So?”

  “So, what?”

  “What’s the point in knowing that?”

  It looked slightly flustered.

  Vivi went alongside Paragon and took the long stem from it. “Medicine. Perhaps that is why you were made. To treat people. Like a doctor.”

  Paragon gave its head a shake. “I don’t think so. I know an awful lot about plants. Not all of them are used for medical purposes.”

  “If you know about plants,” I started, “then you might have been designed for farming.”

  Its head carried on shaking. “No. I know lots of things. Not just about plants.”