by MacGuffin, WJ; Hanrahan, Gareth; Varney, Allen; Ingber, Greg
Bugbrain docbots—urgh!—left a trail of patients: amputees whose arms were now rifle stocks, or burn victims coated with four layers of furniture polish. These bots were the Doc-in-a-Box stock in trade, soylent for its table.
A thief had stolen some BLUE bigwig’s personal docbot. Troubleshooters had supposedly cornered both thief and bot somewhere in this giant FunFoods factory. Standard Tech Services protocol for [Category: BOTS :: Sub-cat: MEDICAL :: Condition-Prior: STOLEN :: Condition-Current: RETRIEVAL] called for a therapy team on-scene in the event of damage to brain or peripherals.
So Fletcher and Stanton were waiting for the mission team to locate the bot—the bot Fletcher and Stanton, armed with BotAway beacon trackers, had already found. Ten minutes ago. In this really cold hangar.
Stanton blew on his fingers. “Should we let them know we’ve found it?”
Fletcher had skipped this morning’s visomorpain pill due to a sore throat; he was thinking more clearly than usual. He looked down the narrow walkway. At the far end waited the bot—and presumably its thief. “Let’s leave that honor for them.”
“Heard about that big shareholder meeting tomorrow night?”
“Yeah.” Fletcher looked around for cameras. He made the Church gesture for silence. “Later.”
“Right.” Stanton jumped in place. “Hey, let’s report some trouble. That brings them to shoot it, and then we heard something down the walkway.”
Fletcher said through chattering teeth, “That works. Where’s Timon-O?”
No one liked to send INFRAREDs on a job unsupervised. Their boss, Timon-O-JSV-1, had dropped them here in this low-clearance packing bay and gone with the Troubleshooters. Fletcher figured he was trying to shine with their reflected glory.
But no—here he was now, shuttling back quick as a rejected Form Return Form 9999-C. Squat and broad with stubby legs, Timon-O wore an orange padded parka and overpants that made him look like a giant packing peanut. “Here,” the pasty ORANGE said in a nasal voice. He threw two black low-temp suits at Fletcher and Stanton. “Try to stay alive. More than those Troubleshooters seem to want.”
Fletcher zipped the parka. “Why, what’s up?”
Timon spoke fast, with maximum fidgeting. “First, I think there were already a couple of fatalities before I even met them. Then they were waving their laser pistols around, until I mentioned, ‘Oh by the way, these tanks can blow us all through our next three lives.’ Then they split up to search through this—this maze. Not a minute later, one of them spots another, mistakes him for a traitor, and belts him with a blackjack. I didn’t know they were even issued blackjacks. The team leader sent them off to the med center.”
“You could use the docbot,” Fletcher said. “It’s back there.”
Timon-O gasped and grabbed Fletcher’s BotAway. He read the screen and laughed. “I found it before they did. Call it in, Stanton.”
Fletcher noticed Timon, after months of management experience, could now teleport instantaneously past “Fletcher and Stanton found the bot” and straight to “I succeeded.” Before he earned his clearance initial, Timon had quartered in the same barracks as Fletcher; he’d been a friendly, even generous fellow. Promotion and power changed him; now it was always, “What can you do for me, and how can I steal the credit?” Now he didn’t seem to like anyone.
Fletcher didn’t care. He liked everyone—or anyway, he didn’t think hard enough to dislike them. He led an INFRARED life. He went where They told him, did what They said, and They expected nothing from him but a smile. Thus had The Computer ordained it, and thus would it ever be.
Timon took him aside. “By the way, Fletcher, while I have you here—I just got back this 445. Improper completion, it says. I’m not sure how- I mean, I’m jammed with work right now—so could you, umm...?” He quickly passed Fletcher a clipboard with a six-ply NCR stack.
Fletcher glanced at it—a rejected Form TS-2952-445 Emergency Bathroom Break Requisition dated two days earlier.
Automatically he looked around for surveillance cameras. It wouldn’t do to black out here.
Fletcher had a problem—if it was a problem—with blackouts. He spent most evenings at his Elective Activity & Pursuit clubhouse supporting Alpha Complex as part of an approved Volunteer Form Checkers group. They helped overburdened Central Processing Unit service firms check submitted forms for rectitude, grammar, and signs of subconscious treason.
Fletcher was his club’s reigning champion. He was considered unbeatable in requisitions and transfers, but he walked on firm ground even with tricky rarities like Accidental Termination of Innocent Victim Justifications and Loyalty Re-Evaluation Speed Tests. But sometimes—no one knew this, or at least Fletcher hoped not—sometimes, when he was confronting a stack of challenging Security Clearance Demotions or Personality Stabilizer Requests, where you really had to know the rules—sometimes he kind of, well, went away. He didn’t faint or pass out; no, something just reached into his cortex and pressed a pause button. He saw black for a moment, blinked, and suddenly minutes had passed and all the forms sat stacked before him, checked and collated. Sometimes he spotted new corrections he’d supposedly made, in small, precise handwriting he didn’t recognize.
Fletcher had never told anyone about his blackouts. It was nobody’s business, especially because it had a certain odor of—he didn’t even want to think the word—mutation.
He shook his head; he must have drifted off a moment. He started to tell Timon, “Sure,” when he noticed a pen had appeared in his hand. He checked the clipboard; the Bathroom Break Requisition was already corrected. Timon-O and Stanton were staring at him.
“Uh—” he began. Timon shook his head, took back the clipboard, and glared at Stanton. “I think you were calling in the find?”
Stanton gulped and returned to clawing at his pocket PDC—his Personal Digital Companion, the indispensable Alpha Complex aid. “I can’t push the buttons right. My fingers are frozen.”
From the walkway fog a low-fi voice chirped, “You look like you’re making a call! Would you like help?”
Without looking, Fletcher knew. It wasn’t a docbot—it was a clippy.
—————
Unlike the doomsday devices and sector-eating plagues on the evening vidshows, the helpbots of Alpha Complex were not a mad inspiration of a single demented traitor, but The Computer’s own authorized initiative, undertaken by its purportedly loyal servants in several service groups. Perhaps the responsible parties had expunged their identities from public records, or possibly they’d faked their deaths and now lived in distant sectors under assumed names.
Whatever the reason, no one had been punished—a fact every traitor must have taken as a hopeful sign he might get away with anything. For in a society where complaining about a candy bar could get you brainscrubbed, helpbots (“clippies”) were silently, universally loathed.
Helpbots worked like The Computer’s ubiquitous context-sensitive help system. Programmed to locate citizens in need, they wandered the corridors, wedging their cheery counsel into any situation. “You look like you’re forcing open that vendobot door. I can tell you about anger management!”—“Talking to Internal Security? Don’t forget to mention that mutation!”
While the INFRAREDs stared, Timon took control. “Bot! Your name and number.”
The clippy wheeled forward with programmed enthusiasm. Its voice seemed to echo from the bottom of a CoffeeLyke can. “Helpbot TSHB41566-212.11.09-788 at your service, Human-Interaction Designation ‘Drammel’!”
“Drammel” was a thin gunmetal-gray plank perched on end, about a meter high, with a rounded top like a paperclip—hence the nickname. Like all helpbots, it had a carbon-fiber exterior; by many informal experiments citizens had learned the stuff was nearly indestructible. In twin holes near the top—its head—stereo cameras rotated freely inside plastic housings, looking now forward, now behind. Intersecting the body’s midpoint, a jutting horizontal disk bore two manipulators, grippers that s
pun in independent tracks to front and rear. Another disk at the base mounted six polyurethane wheels. Speaker grilles on the front and back of Drammel’s head were shaped like grinning mouths, doubtless on the advice of some sociopathic marketing expert who thought it looked friendly.
“I’m assigned to Reuben-B-GHP-14, Sector JSV Cerulean Suites, Corridor 12,” said Drammel. “You look like you’re curious about the traitorous thief who brought me here. Would you like help locating him?”
“We would!” An ORANGE Troubleshooter strode into the area like he owned it.
Gazing at the man with fascination, Fletcher felt a vidshow fan’s excitement. A real Troubleshooter! He looked just like a hero of Alpha Complex should look: tall, broad-shouldered, with curling blond hair, gleaming blue eyes, and a rack of teeth that shone like transbot chrome. His orange reflec coveralls seemed to glitter. On an HPD&MC Catch That Traitor! casting call, he would win “Series Lead.” His chest badge read FABIAN-O-JSV-3—TEAM LEADER.
Several paces behind Fabian-O walked another Troubleshooter. Fletcher tried gamely to feel the same thrill at this weak-chinned, straw-haired, potbellied RED. His red coveralls, with the badge GILES-R-JSV-4, were torn and stained. He carried a multicorder and, strapped to his back, a sledgehammer.
“Bot!” Fabian began, then paused to nod quickly to Timon and the INFRAREDs. “Fabian-O, pleasedtomeetyou—this is my Equipment Guy—anyway. Bot! Who stole you, and why?”
“I can answer that!” said Drammel. “It was a treasonous human male criminal. A bandit, cheat, crook, defalcator, heister, larcenist -”
“What is the thief’s name?”
“I can help with that! I can take you to him, and you can search his body.”
The humans exchanged looks. Fabian asked, “He’s dead?”
“I know that answer! It’s possible the body parts not yet absorbed may still harbor living cells.”
“Absorbed?”
Timon broke in. “If he got into an intake hopper—”
“Giles-R,” Fabian said. “Go and pry the thief out of the machinery.”
“Ohhh no!” The other Troubleshooter shied back. “You got rid of the others, but I’m not about to—”
Fabian’s smile showed his gritted teeth. “Civilians.” He gestured at the INFRAREDs. “Of course I appreciate your due caution in this hazardous situation. I know The Computer will assess your hesitation fairly.” He raised his PDC.
“Okay, okay. But I want that bot to lead the way.”
“I can help you there!” Drammel rolled down the walkway and into the fog between the giant tanks. After looking in all directions, as if for escape routes, Giles-R trudged after it.
Suddenly Timon-O seemed to perceive his own glory slipping away into the same fog. He pointed at the INFRAREDs. “Go after them.” Then, to the puzzled Fabian: “I should have my people there too. For, um, consultation.”
Fletcher was about to ask for an Emergency Bathroom Break, but Stanton spoke sooner and faster: “Fletcher has experience with helpbots, don’t you, Fletcher? Wish I did, but it’s all docbots with me.”
Timon pointed. “Fletcher, go.”
Fletcher silently wished on Stanton the attentions of many docbots. Then, seeing no good excuse, and hoping he might impress the Troubleshooter, he ventured into the fog.
Gray chemical tanks loomed all around. A black stripe on the concrete floor showed Fletcher was still in a low-clearance area. Condensation trickled into steel floor grilles, and his low-temp suit grew damp. In a grid of walkways receding in all directions into white vapor, he felt a sensation rare in an INFRARED’s anthill life: isolation.
Noises sounded oddly close here. Fletcher moved toward the bot’s echoing chatter—then stopped. He was standing beside a sheet-metal shed or cabinet that thrummed with power. On principle, Fletcher avoided thrumming. Thrumming meant mistuned equipment, loose fittings, or unseated housings. Thrum = threat.
In this case, he discovered, thrum = human body stuffed in organic-chemical loading hopper. In the floor chute he could see only one protruding arm and a leg, each still clad in tattered yellow. Behind the chute, clear plastic pipes filled with chemicals reached into the fog overhead. Fletcher noted their current tinge of red.
He considered. Anyone hiding in this cabinet, say for instance from pursuing Troubleshooters, could easily slip backward and fall into the chute. It almost seemed designed to encourage such accidents. He could imagine the CPU cost-benefit analysis: one less traitor, plus that night’s Cold Fun would offer extra savor. Win-win.
But where was the Troubleshooter? Further down the walkway Fletcher heard the helpbot’s echoing voice, then thudding blows.
He ran to the next intersection. Around the corner stood the Equipment Guy, Giles-R, bringing up his sledgehammer for another swing. The helpbot had toppled, and its grippers were beating a tattoo on the cement. “You look like you’re trying to destroy me! Do you want to know about my carbon-fiber frame?”
Fletcher had no idea what to do. “Uhh—hey?”
Giles turned, dropped his hammer, and pulled his laser pistol. The red barrel had six concentric rings; five of them were black, and Fletcher had seen enough vidshows to know what that meant: One shot remained. He tried to run, slipped, fell, and the shot hit a coolant pipe. White vapor shot out and struck Giles. The Troubleshooter reeled back, fell, hit his head on a steel pipe, and lay still.
Through a cloud of ammoniac ozone Fletcher crawled on his knees to the helpbot and pulled it upright. “Come on.” Not knowing or caring whether the bot followed, he scrambled to his feet and ran for the light.
- - - - -
Back in the packing bay, while Stanton and Timon looked on in envy, Troubleshooter Fabian-O was thanking Fletcher—“Quick thinking, my good man”—when from the walkway they heard a muted whump!
“What was that?” Timon’s tone suggested he was worried the damage would somehow hit his budget.
“I can answer that! That was an explosion!”
“Giles-R had a neurowhip,” Fabian said. “Maybe the fight damaged its power supply. I hope the explosion doesn’t trigger something else.”
“Don’t worry,” said Timon. “He’d have to be carrying, I don’t know, volatile chemicals—”
BOOMPH! An alarm rang.
“That would be his corrosion gas grenade,” Fabian observed.
“Corrosion? Fletcher, you said you left him leaning against a pipe made of—”
WHOOOOSH! A geyser of vapor shot to the ceiling. A warning klaxon blared.
“It looks like you’re having an industrial accident! Would you like to know which FunFoods chemical reagents are flammable?”
Timon looked wary. “Would he have carried anything incend—?”
BA-BA-BAOOOOM! The geyser burst into a column of flame. Sirens shrieked.
Fabian-O said brightly, “Let’s adjourn to the lobby.”
The FunFoods lobby was well appointed, cheery, and ORANGE-Clearance, which made Fletcher nervous. But the security personnel and fire teams running to the warehouse floor paid the INFRAREDs no notice.
Timon was on the phone with Doc-in-a-Box HQ. Fabian seemed unexpectedly happy to talk with the INFRAREDs, perhaps because Stanton was gushing like his biggest fan. Fletcher wondered if he’d get in trouble for Giles-R’s death, but Fabian never mentioned it. He sure didn’t seem broken up.
Fabian took charge of the helpbot: “I’ll bring it to Dispatch, and they’ll decide what to do.”
“Why was Giles-R trying to destroy it?” Stanton asked.
“No way to know. I suspect he belonged to a secret society, the Frankenstein Destroyers—you know, the bot haters.”
Fletcher tried not to sound suspicious. “Considering you’re the last one alive from your team, you’re bearing up well.”
Fabian chuckled. “Troubleshooters say the ideal debriefing report begins, ‘I speak without fear of contradiction.’”
Stanton laughed a subservient laugh. In terror Fletcher fo
resaw Stanton (who hadn’t recently been targeted by Troubleshooter laser fire, and who could seldom shut up anyway) was about to say something rash, if not aggressively stupid.
Sure enough: “Deliver us from traitors,” Stanton said. Then he started and stammered, as he recalled secret society recognition code phrases don’t make polite conversation.
Fabian’s eyes widened. He seized both INFRAREDs by their black jackets and slammed them against the lobby wall. “What did you say?”
“Nothing nothing nooothing!” Stanton babbled. “I was just praying, I mean wishing, WISHinnng you good luck!”
Fabian looked around. Timon, still on his PDC, hadn’t noticed anything. The Troubleshooter’s broad back hid both INFRAREDs from the nearest security camera. Fletcher realized an ORANGE Troubleshooter could do whatever he wanted to them here—even kill them—and, if anything, get a commendation.
Fabian sized them up like slimes on a FunFoods vat. “Have you—” He paused. “Have you both heard the Good Data?” He touched four points on his chest, tracing the shape of the Holy Monitor.
Fletcher and Stanton tensed, goggled, then just about dissolved in relief. Fabian, like both of them, belonged to the largest and loyal-est of the many secret societies in Alpha Complex, First Church of Christ Computer-Programmer. The FCCC-P covertly worshipped The Computer as a god. Membership in any secret society was treason—but as treason went, the church was pretty harmless, though The Computer officially prohibited religion as a threat to good order.
“Praise The Computer,” the INFRAREDs murmured.
“The Computer is my friend, I shall not want,” Fabian responded catechetically, with a quick look over his shoulder. “Are you Lasers of the Faithful?”
Fletcher’s wariness returned. “No, Church of the Impending Reboot.”
Fabian frowned, then shrugged. “Always room for improvement. You two heard about the big meeting tomorrow night? —Good. Who knows, maybe you’ll help out.”