Runaway Robot

by Frank Cottrell Boyce

  I’ve got Eric.

  The driverless shuttle is supposed to go non-stop to Concorde Circus, but just before the estate entrance the bus said, ‘Due to the current emergency situation, we are being held here. Please continue your journey by other means.’

  ‘What emergency situation?’ said Mum.

  It turned out that the Emergency Situation was Eric.

  We got off the bus and started walking home to Stealth Street. All the way up B-52 Street and right round on to Hurricane Way, the streets were full of people and robots. There were people standing in doorways looking up and down the road. Robots of every kind – Pizzabots, lawnmowers, street cleaners – were toddling along the pavements.

  ‘What,’ said Mum, ‘is going on?’

  ‘News Update,’ said a passing DustHog. ‘The rogue robot has been located and confined to Concorde Circus on the Skyways estate.’

  When I heard that, my heart sank.

  Now that Eric could walk, he couldn’t stop. While I was at the hospital talking to you, he was probably stomping all over the place in plain sight.

  A police siren blared once, then stopped – blam! – as if someone had stamped on it. I found out a bit later that that was because Eric had.

  We followed the crowd to Concorde Circus. There was a ring of police cars right round the traffic island. I couldn’t see Eric at first because of the crowd and the tree. Then he stomped into view. He was standing on the bonnet of one of the police cars. He put one foot on the roof. The roof sagged under his weight. The windscreen buckled and shattered. Eric made a giant stride off the roof of that car, on to the next one.

  And the next one.

  And the next one.

  Roofs bent, and windscreens shattered everywhere he went. He did a full lap of the Circus, leaving a trail of destruction behind him. He didn’t mean to leave a trail of destruction. He’d just got a bit happy about his newly-recovered walking skills. All around the Circus, there were people holding up their phones, live-streaming Eric.

  Eric took this as a sign that everyone loved him. He waved at the crowd. Bowed his head and said:

  IT IS CONSIDERED POLITE TO STAND FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM.

  Which was unnecessary, as they were already standing up. When he started singing, they covered their ears. Some of them ran away.

  A van pulled up. Rusty got out, carrying the flame cutter. ‘It’s OK, everyone!’ he shouted as the police cleared a way through the crowd for him. ‘You won’t believe the mix I’ve got here. So hot. Any minute now, this robot will be a neat pile of conveniently sized metal squares.’

  As he walked towards Eric, the flame at the end of his metal cutter sparked and hissed like a blazing blue snake. Eric had no idea he was in trouble. He bowed his head and said:

  I AM YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT.

  Rusty lowered his visor and walked towards Eric. He turned to the crowd and said, ‘Would anyone like to give me a hand?’

  You know what happened next. Eric scanned the faces of the crowd, barged through the barrier of police cars and grabbed me.

  Mum screamed.

  Everyone screamed.

  ‘Alfie! Run!’ yelled Mum.

  Eric took two giant strides towards me. I grabbed his outstretched hand. He swung me up above the crowd.

  ‘No!’ yelled Mum. ‘Help! It’s stealing my son!’

  ‘It’s OK, Mum!’ I yelled. ‘We’re friends!’

  She couldn’t hear over all the screaming and yelling. Eric plonked me down in front of Rusty.

  ‘You asked him for a hand,’ I explained, taking off Lefty for him to see. ‘He takes things pretty literally.’

  I honestly thought Rusty would recognize me, but he didn’t. He just rolled his eyes.

  ‘Why would I need some little kid’s fake hand?’

  ‘My hand,’ I said, ‘is not fake. Just because a hand is not made of flesh, does not mean it’s not real. Lefty is a state-of-the-art hand, and he can do stuff your hand can’t. For instance, this . . .’

  I reached up, and with my flame-retardant, heat-resistant fingers, I pinched the burning end of the metal cutter. Because it was so hot, the metal was surprisingly soft. I squeezed it until I’d nipped the end of the tube shut and snuffed out the flame.

  When his flame went out, Rusty’s face lit up. ‘What did you do that for? Well, just you wait. Now sparks really are going to FLY!’

  Rusty shouted that last word very loud indeed.

  And Eric took it very literally indeed.

  He put me under his arm. He began to shake.

  Then the ground began to shake.

  There was a bang.

  Some smoke.

  And Eric left the ground.

  He rose into the air like the biggest football trophy ever being lifted by a colossal invisible footballer. For as far as you could see, every face and every phone tipped up to watch us as we pushed higher and higher. Twigs and branches snapped and leaves whirled as we snagged against the tree. Gasps and screams blew by like lost party balloons. I tried to pick Mum’s face out in the crowd below.

  ‘Eric, take me to the hospital!’ I yelled.

  So, Arty, you’re probably thinking he’s about to walk into the room, and you’re going to meet him in the flesh. Well, not the flesh, but the metal.

  Are you excited? Can you even wait?

  Well, you’ll have to wait.

  Because the truth is, he’s not here.

  Not going to lie, Arty. I’ve been making it up. There isn’t really an Eric-based emergency situation. I made all this up to try to wake you. I thought if I told you something unbelievably exciting it might make you open your eyes. It didn’t work. I think somehow you must have known that none of it was true.

  This is what really happened when Mum and I left the hospital that night.

  We caught the shuttle bus back to Stealth Street. We didn’t see an Eric-related riot. The DustHog came up and said, ‘If you liked the news about the rogue robot, you’ll love the news that is streaming right now.’

  So we watched the news at home as we had our tea.

  ‘Oh! That’s Dr Shilling!’ said Mum, all excited. ‘Look! Your Dr Shilling.’

  The news reporter was asking her about Eric . . .

  Reporter: ‘The rogue robot that has been terrorizing the Skyways estate has alarmed a lot of people. Is it the first of many? Are robots fed up of bringing us pizzas and emptying our bins? Are we facing a robot revolution? Is this the beginning of a robot war?’

  Dr Shilling: ‘No.’

  Reporter: ‘There’s always been a rumour in the Skyways area that, back in the day, your family – the Shilling family – built a warrior robot who went mad and killed someone with a sword. Is this robot possibly that crazed warrior robot come back to life?’

  Dr Shilling: ‘No.’

  Reporter: ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Dr Shilling: ‘First, there never was a warrior robot. My family helped children who had been injured in accidents and wars. Second, robots do not go mad. Because robots do not have minds. Robots only do what they’re told to do. Robots are not pets. Robots are not replacement people. Robots are machines that do jobs. Robots shaped like people confuse our emotions. We want to be their friends, to get close to them. And if that happens tragedy can follow. Because they are not our friends.’

  Reporter: ‘So there never was a Shilling robot?’

  Dr Shilling: *Looks uncomfortable* ‘There WAS a robot. And that robot was involved in a terrible tragedy. An air crash. But that was a very long time ago. When my father was a little boy. And the robot was destroyed in the crash. If you’re saying that Eric could have survived the crash, well, that seems impossible.’

  Reporter: ‘Eric?’

  Dr Shilling: *Glares at the reporter* ‘That robot was called Eric. This robot is an unlicensed robot built by someone very irresponsible who should be brought to justice.’

  ‘They do say,’ said Mum, ‘careful what you wish for.’

&
nbsp; I looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Robots can do terrible things with the best of intentions. Like the magic cod fish.’

  ‘What magic cod fish?’

  ‘The story goes,’ said Mum, ‘that, long ago, a fisherman caught a magic cod fish. The cod fish offered him three wishes if he would just throw him back in the sea. The fisherman’s first wish was to see his son come back from the war. The second was for a hundred pieces of gold. He didn’t, he said, even need a third wish.

  ‘The magic cod fish granted his wishes. But the cod fish didn’t understand all the other things about being a human and being a dad. So he brought the fisherman’s son home from the war – in a coffin. And the king sent a hundred gold pieces in recognition of the son’s heroic death. Robots are all a bit like magic cod fish. You have to be very careful how you talk to them.’

  I had one wish for Eric, I thought. I wanted him to walk into your room and say something – anything – in his ice-cream-van-playing-bagpipes voice. If I could just make that happen, I knew you would sit up in the bed and say, ‘Alfie!’

  There’s nothing complicated about that wish, is there? I mean, what could go wrong with a wish like that?

  So next morning, first thing, I went back to the hangar.

  There was no sign of Eric. Just a vast empty space full of cobwebs and dust, with a big round table suspended from the ceiling, swaying gently in the breeze.

  I listened.

  Nothing but a blackbird singing, and – through the trees – the sounds of the airport.

  I searched every corner with my thumb torch. The only thing I found was your scooter. If I hadn’t found that, I might have thought the whole thing had been a dream. I tucked it under my arm to take home, because you’re going to need it when you get better.

  I went back outside to start searching the woods. Surely Eric would be easy to track. A man of steel is bound to leave footprints.

  Nothing. No sign.

  If he hadn’t gone off through the woods, where had he gone? There was only one place left to look: the spooky outhouse.

  I tip-toed through the long grass. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it gently. It swung open. A cloud of dust swirled out of the room beyond. Something touched my hair. I jumped back. It was just flakes of dry paint pattering down from the lintel on to my head. I leaned into the room. A spider’s web as big and heavy as a Christmas stocking hung down from the light fitting. In the corner, a set of broken steps led up to a balcony covered in stacks of yellow paper. Something – maybe a mouse – was scrabbling about among them.

  Whatever or whoever it was knew about Eric.

  I was scared. But I was going to find them.

  I stepped in.

  A stack of yellow paper slumped over and crashed to the floor. Sheets flew like skeleton bats around the room.

  ‘Who’s there?’ I said calmly. OK, so I probably screamed.

  ‘Where have. You been?’ asked Shatter.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I always come. Here. I was coming. Here before you found Eric. I was watching the. Day you hid. Him here.’

  ‘And the day the shelves fell on me.’ ‘That was. Funny.’

  ‘So that was you laughing? It was terrifying.’

  ‘The others ran. Away. That was even. Funnier.’

  ‘And even more terrifying – I thought I was going to die, alone in the hangar.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. Have let. You.’

  I asked her what had happened after that.

  She said Eric had wandered around the hangar for a while, practising his walking.

  ‘Then I went. Home. I was going to leave him here. Until I was. Ready.’

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘To Sell. Him.’ Shatter had it all worked out in her head. ‘Instead. Of people fighting each. Other and killing. People. We could have robot. Armies fighting robots. Could pay to watch. On TV. What do. You think? Eric could be. The first, and I’d be. Rich and Famous.’

  ‘Eric’s not a soldier. He likes making tea.’

  ‘No. He’s a. Soldier.’

  ‘He wants to do the ironing.’

  ‘He wants. Revenge.’

  ‘What? What kind of revenge? What are you talking about?’

  She didn’t answer. A plane was passing overhead, so of course she was looking up at it.

  ‘The Barcelona flight,’ she said. ‘I started to come here to watch. The planes go. By.’

  The way she said it made it sound as if the planes were saying ‘goodbye’.

  ‘Why do you watch the planes?’

  ‘One day I’ll. Go home in. One.’

  We were really close to the runway here. The Barcelona plane seemed almost to graze the tree tops, but instead of going in to land, it curved round, climbed higher and higher into the sky, then circled.

  ‘It’s supposed to. Land. Something’s. Stopping it.’

  ‘There must be some kind of problem at the airport.’

  We looked at each other, and both at the same time said, ‘Eric!’

  We ran outside. I was going to head back along the path to the road, but Shatter grabbed me and spun me round before tearing off in another direction.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I shouted as I ran after her.

  There was a bank of tall nettles right next to us. Shatter charged through it. She beckoned me to follow her. Stamping through nettles was fine for her with her resin foot. I wasn’t so sure. Then I saw where she was heading. Something huge had flattened a path right through the middle of the nettle banks. the trail led through the trees ahead of us, all the way to the airport’s perimeter. We could see a traffic jam of planes on the runway, a van speeding toward it with sirens blaring, and the Barcelona plane still circling overhead. We got a really good view of this because the part of the fence in front of us had been demolished. It looked like it had been ripped down like a piece of kitchen roll, screwed up and thrown aside.

  We looked at each other. We didn’t need to say ‘Eric’ this time. There was only one person who could have possibly have done that.

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Shatter.

  Through the gap.

  Across the grass.

  We dashed for the buildings.

  As we got nearer, we saw another van with a siren . . . and another. Alarms were wailing all over the airport runways.

  ‘There’s a. Situation!’ Shatter said with a smile. ‘There’s going to be. Trouble.’

  She said this the way you might say, ‘There’s going to be Viennetta.’

  Then we saw him.

  All the way around the perimeter of the main airport building, there are little bridges sticking out from the first floor, but ending in mid-air. Normally a plane taxis up to one of these, and the passengers board or disembark via the bridge. Eric was standing under the nearest one. As we watched, he pulled at the bridge’s legs. They bent as easily as if they were made of marshmallow. He pulled the entrance to the bridge down until it was almost at ground level, then crawled inside.

  ‘Where’s he. Going?’

  ‘He’s looking for something,’ I said. ‘When he first went to the woods, he knew where he was going. He was going to find his leg.’

  ‘SO . . .’

  ‘Well, think about it. You’re looking for something that you’ve lost in an airport. Where do you start?’

  ‘I don’t hang. Around in. Airports so. How would I. Know?’

  ‘Lost Property.’

  There was tension and fear all over the main concourse. Tension, because everyone could see that nearly all flights but one had been delayed. Fear, because everyone was worrying about why. I dodged and sidled through the crowd, with Shatter following me.

  Every now and then, you’d hear the word ‘robot’ and ‘rogue’ or ‘gone mad’. There were security people stopping anyone from going into departures or coming out of arrivals. Nobody even glanced at two kids going into the Lost Property reception.

  It was quiet
in there after the noise of the concourse. There was no one behind the desk but through the door at the back we could see a halo of light moving through the darkness of the shelves. Happy to Help was scrolling through something on her tablet.

  ‘With you in one moment,’ she sang.

  I was going to answer her, but a different voice boomed out of the shadows.

  I AM YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT.

  The voice of Eric!

  ‘Are you really?’ jeered Happy to Help. ‘A servant is just what I need. Where have you been all my life?’

  I’M SORRY. I CAN’T ANSWER THAT QUESTION.

  ‘It’s him,’ I hissed to Shatter.

  ‘I know. That.’

  THERE ARE MANY LOST THINGS HERE.

  ‘Tell me something I don’t know,’ murmured Happy to Help.

  THERE ARE MORE LIFEFORMS LIVING ON A SINGLE HUMAN’S SKIN THAN THERE ARE PEOPLE ON PLANET EARTH.

  ‘What?’

  YOU REQUESTED THAT I TELL YOU SOMETHING YOU DIDN’T KNOW. I AM YOUR OBEDIENT SERVANT.

  ‘Oh. Right. Trying to be funny. Very good.’

  I WAS DESIGNED AND BUILT BY SHILLING OF SHILLING AVIATION.

  ‘I’ll be with you in one second. Why not take a seat?’

  Oh, don’t say that, I thought – but it was too late. There are seats in Lost Property, but they are fastened into the concrete floor with massive screws. But the woman had told Eric to take a seat, so Eric took one.

  He stepped out of the shadows, blue eyes ablaze with electricity. Last time he’d been here, he couldn’t stand up. Now he wasn’t so far off reaching the ceiling. Not going to lie, he did look quite frightening as he shook one of the chairs back and forth to loosen it, then wrenched it out of the ground with his massive hands. Chunks of concrete clumped to the floor. Metal fixings rang like warning bells.

  Finally the woman looked up.

  ‘What? Who? NO! Don’t hit me!’

  I dashed forward. ‘He doesn’t want to hit you. He’s just doing what you said. He’s a bit literal-minded, that’s all. You said take a seat, so he took one. Please don’t panic.’