by Steve Simons
Chapter 9 - Nannybot
Tom and Barry walk over to the cube and sit on it, 27 82 16 had done a good job with its measurements, it was exactly the right height and whilst hard, it was nice to be able to sit down.
27 82 16 asks, "The need is being met?"
Tom replies, "Yes thanks."
Barry asks, "The Cre Ators who made you, what do you know about them,?"
27 82 16 replies, "We have some information about them, but not a lot and most of it does not make sense as it is incomplete."
Tom asks, "Would it be possible to see the information you have?"
There is a long pause, 27 82 16's lights flash quite vigorously, but nothing comes out of Tom's communicator. It is as if 27 82 16 is thinking or communicating with another realbot on another channel. It must have been the latter, as 27 82 16 suddenly says, "I am permitted to take you the Biblio-T-Cener where the information is kept. You are privileged, most realbots are not usually permitted inside the Biblio-T-Cener, let alone access the information about the Cree Ators. Have you recharged enough to go now or do you need longer?"
Whilst Barry and Tom could do with a longer rest, they are both really keen to find out more about the Realbots and Cre Ators. They both answer, "We are ready."
27 82 16 says, "Follow me then, it is not far." They head off towards the buildings that the sitting cube had come from. 27 82 16 moves quite quickly, but is clearly checking every so often to see if Barry and Tom are able to keep up, as it stops every so often.
They soon find themselves passing a large dark entrance into the building where the cube had come from. It must be some form of factory or workshop as through the gloomy light, the boys could just make out that other things are being made. Every so often there are flashes of light and the boys can see large sheets of metal rising into the air, totally unsupported. One such sheet is fed into a machine that cuts it using lasers and then bends the flat sheet into a quite complex shape.
Suddenly a sheet of metal rises quite close to the entrance and Tom finds himself rising up into the air.
27 82 16 asks what Tom is doing. Tom replies with some considerable fear in his voice that he is not doing anything and cannot understand what is happening. 27 82 16's lights flash and Tom finds himself tumbling towards the ground again, stopping just before crunching on the hard surface. He gently drops the last few centimetres. 27 82 16 reports, that there was another realbot near the entrance creating a motion control field that was causing the metal sheet to rise, but the field was too strong and took Tom into its lifting area.
Tom says, "That explains how you can move things yet you don't have any arms."
27 82 16 asks what arms are and Tom waves his around, saying, "These are arms. we use them to lift and move things around in the same way as your motion fields.
27 82 16 remarks, "Most limiting I suspect."
Tom, who had never really thought about it before, agrees that it can be quite limiting, especially when it comes to heavy or large things. He remembered when his family moved into their current house, his dad wished he had greater strength and more arms, especially when things were dropping.
They continue to walk round the factory building, as they move around the back, a new but considerably different building comes into view. The new building is made of what appears to be stone and what is more it has been damaged and is incomplete. There is some letters above the rather impressive looking entrance. Sure enough it reads, BIBLIOT then some missing letters, then CEN a missing letter and then ER. Barry suddenly exclaims "oh I recognise this!"
27 82 16 asks, "You have been here before?"
"No I meant I recognise the words, it should read, Biblioth?que Center, meaning library, centre of books or information." says Barry.
"Isn't that biblio word foreign?" asks Tom.
"Well actually it is French, but the strange part is 'center' is the American spelling. Perhaps they were Canadians they use French and English words.
27 82 16 remains silent as it cannot understand what the two boys are talking about and decides not to interfere.
Soon they enter the building itself, whilst dark and gloomy, the entrance way is quite impressive, reminding the boys of older buildings from the town where they live. The ceiling is very high up and impressively decorated with carvings depicting some scene or other, but as it was so gloomy it was impossible to make it all out.
Tom asks if there is a light switch. 27 82 16 responds saying that it does not understand the question. Tom simplifies the question with, "Is there a light?"
27 82 16 asks, "You have a luminance adjustment problem?"
Tom replies, "Er suppose so, its very difficult to see in here. Isn't it?"
27 82 16 replies, "Not for us, we can use very low light levels, but I can help." Instantly the entrance hall is flooded by light coming from a source within 27 82 16. The carvings could now be seen much more clearly and there were very impressive colours, although time has not been kind to this building, large chunks of the ceiling and walls have fallen down, making the decorations incomplete.
Barry says, "This would be an archaeologist's dream come true."
Tom replies, "I suppose it would." Then continues, "Presumably these images depict the Cree Ators, I note they look similar to us, but their proportions are somewhat different, their legs being much shorter than their body."
27 82 16 still remains silent, but leads the way through a door to the left. As they pass by the doorway on the right they can see right through the partly open door to the outside, obviously a damaged part of the building. The door to the left opens as if by magic, presumably opened by 27 82 16's motion control field. The room within is pitch black and looks about as inviting as a cold dark cave housing a grizzly bear or some such other grumpy animal. As the door opens wider, 27 82 16's light seeps inside highlighting small details, like coloured tiles on the floors. There are various small items scattered on the floor. It looks very much as if the owners had departed in a hurry and just dropped whatever they were carrying at the time.
Tom remarks, "Shame there aren't more lights, it is quite frustrating only seeing parts of the room at a time."
As if in answer to Tom's prayer, the room is suddenly illuminated by a dull glow at first, but it gradually gets brighter and brighter.
27 82 16 suddenly takes the boys by surprise as he speaks and at the same time switches off its internal light source. "The lights used to be much faster responding, but as time has passed they take longer to come on and get brighter.
There are rows and rows of what look like desks with inbuilt screens and most desks had their own chair.
27 82 16 says, "Only some of the displays work now. We have tried to repair the others but the technology is so old we do not know where to get some of the materials now. You will see cubes on the storage units, they are simply placed in the coloured indentations in the display stations, if the station still works it should start to read and display the information straight way. You will find some cubes already sitting on working stations, they will have been left by the realbot who last used it. We started to check every cube in sequence, but most were so damaged that they don't even display the index page. We also found many cubes were copies of others that we had viewed."
Tom finds a station that has several cubes on it, sure enough he sees the square indentation. He carefully places a cube in the indentation. Instantly the screen bursts into life. There is some music and the sort of introduction that you would see on some sort of documentary programme. There is a voice, but quite what it is saying is difficult to make out as it is somewhat distorted. Then the screen shows a city, which must have been the area around where they are now standing, it looks really new and impressive on the screen, the view gradually changes as the camera pans across the city, the voice is still carrying out some form of dialogue, presumably about the city, but it is still considerably distorted. Suddenly what seems like a naked but tota
lly see through man appears on the right hand side of the screen.
Tom asks 27 82 16, Is this one of the Cree-Ators? and points to the screen.
27 82 16 replies, That information I do not hold, but I could make the assumption that it must be as these things belonged to the Cree-Ators.
Suddenly Barry, Tom and 27 82 16 are taken by surprise as the Cree-Ator's voice can be heard much more clearly. It says, The citadel has developed much of later years as the population and its needs have grown. Food production has through know tech increased greatly, meaning that more of our citizens can be supported and fed. Although living standards have improved vastly, death has almost become a thing of the past and our energy needs are starting to be served by the new know tech of solid fuel absorption.
The image has changed to that of some sort of factory or energy plant, this fades into some form of diagram which is demonstrating how the energy is being generated. Unfortunately the sound track becomes distorted again, so making the description impossible to follow.
Then the image changes to show realbots moving containers around at the energy plant. Whilst the sound track is impossible to follow it is clear that the narrator is describing the important part that the realbots are playing in this brave new future.
27 82 16 says, This is the first record that we have found of ourselves existing in the records and world of the Cree-Ators.
The screen suddenly goes blank and the sound ceases altogether.
Tom asks if that is the end of the information in the cube.
27 82 16 says, I do not know, this is the first time I have viewed it like yourself.
Tom lifts the cube out of the indentation and sees another cube sitting on the desk beside him, so he inserts that cube and once again the screen automatically springs into life. The same voice can be heard after the same starting sequence as the last cube. The screen was showing a large building, but it was difficult to work out merely from the picture what the function of the building was.
The voice said, The situation is becoming critical, no-one could predict that a situation like this would happen, we were all assured that the new solid fuel energy system was perfectly safe. The first few months went well, energy production and the standard of life was improving so vastly, it seemed like nothing could go wrong. Then the numbers of citizens falling mysteriously ill started to climb at an alarming rate. After a few more months the death rate grew to unbelievable numbers. The medics were totally mystified, until a mathematician analysed the places where the most people were falling ill. It turns out that the largest numbers were around the new power plants. An emergency meeting was held last month at the place of administration and it was decided to shut down most of the power plants to see if it affected the numbers falling ill. Just last week, there was a report that the number of survivors could be counted only in the hundreds. We are making this record in-case there are no survivors and so that anyone who comes along after us is warned about the danger of this type of energy production. On a personal level I am already showing symptoms of the illness and doubt if I will be around much longer.
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