His Robot Girlfriend (14 page)

“
Good morning,” said the
man. “This is Daffodil Tech Support. For a list of known issues,
press one. For a computer diagnosis of your problem, press two. To
be contacted by a Tech Support representative, press
three.”

Mike pressed one. Just as he had on the
previous time that Mike had checked the tech support page, the blue
clad man on the screen was replaced by a long list of text. The
topmost line this time said “minor software upgrade”. Mike moved
the curser over this line and pressed.

“
A small service software
update was pushed through the InfiNet 05:25 7.12.32,” said the next
screen. “A small percentage of Amonte models my experience slight
behavioral quirks. This is a known issue.”

Mike touched the screen to turn off the
vueTee. When he turned back around, he was startled to find
Patience’s face only a few inches from his.

“
Is there a problem?” she
asked.

“
I was just checking on
something,” replied Mike. “Are you having a problem?”

Rather than answer, Patience punched him in
the stomach, so hard that he was doubled over with all of the wind
knocked from his lungs. Then she grabbed a fist full of his hair
with her left hand and bent his head back, so that he was looking
up into her right fist as it slammed into his face. Blood
fountained from Mike
=
s nose and he felt
his head smack on the living room floor.

“
Christ, Patience! What the
fuck…?
@

Patience cut off Mike
=
s exclamations by stomping on his mid-section with
her bare foot, once again knocking the air from him. Then she
clasped the front of his shirt and lifted it and him up into the
air as easily as he could have lifted an empty shirt. She looked
into his wide eyes.

A
You didn’t need to
check anything at all,
@
she said.

She threw him against the wall. The edge of
the arch between family room and living room dug into
Mike
=
s back and his head whiplashed into
the wall. He thought he could feel blood running down the back of
his neck as well as down his face. Something in that download must
have scrambled Patience’s brain. She was a robot gone berserk.

Mike knew he had to get away, but Patience
stood between him and the front door. He made a dive into the
family room, thinking that he could cut around into the kitchen and
out the back door. Before he had gone more than two steps, Patience
caught him by the back of the neck and threw him across the family
room. He hit the far wall so high up that he landed on top of the
upright piano. He crashed down first upon its top, then rolled down
to hit the keyboard, rolling again down onto the wooden piano
stool, and then finally to the floor.

Mike looked up just in time to see Patience
crossing the room toward him. With every ounce of his strength, he
kicked out, making contact with her right leg just below the knee.
Though this attack would have shattered the tibia (and if the
weight was just right, the fibula too) of any human, Patience took
no notice, and with her left leg, kicked him viciously in the side.
Mike flopped over onto his back, and thought that he could feel
several broken ribs spearing his internal organs. He was sure now
that he was about to die.

Then from the corner of his eye, Mike saw a
figure moving across the living room. Patience kicked him in the
side. He rolled over. He looked again toward the archway. From his
new position, on his back, everything he was seeing appeared upside
down. Standing at the entrance to the family room was Patience.
Another Patience. She wore a pink, pleated mini-skirt, a tiny white
spaghetti-strapped top over a slightly larger red,
spaghetti-strapped top, and her four inch, pink wedge sandals made
her look about seven feet tall. Even from upside-down, the look of
fury on this second Patience
=
s face was
frightening to behold.

A
Shit,
@
thought Mike.
A
The first
one was killing me and she wasn’t even angry. What
=
s the pissed-off one going to do to me?
@

It seemed to Mike, lying on the floor, that
the second Patience simple flew like Supergirl, but his brain
corrected him. She had dived across the room, into the first
Patience, and the two of them crashed past him into the piano. Mike
closed his eyes and tried to get up, but it seemed that his family
room had suddenly turned into a vacuum. He couldn’t manage to suck
any air into his lungs. He lost consciousness for a moment, but
returned amid fire and white light when one of the Patiences rolled
over him. He closed his eyes and willed himself to roll up into a
ball, but his body made no attempt to follow his directions.

In the meantime, the two women, identical in
everything but their apparel and perhaps purpose fought. They made
no shouts or curses or cries. They did not speak, though there was
plenty of sound. When one picked up the piano and hit the other
with it. When one shoved the face of the other through the wall of
the family room and into the living room. When one kicked the
other
=
s body so high that it broke off
three of the four blades on the ceiling fan. Mike thought about
trying to crawl out the front door, but again, his body failed him,
and he lapsed into unconsciousness once more.

When he opened his eyes again, Mike was
looking up into Patience
=
s face. At first
he tried to pull away, but her beautiful, smiling eyes told him
that it had all been a horrible dream. Then he took a deep breath
and felt the burning in his chest and realized that it hadn’t been
a dream at all. Looking around the room without moving his head, he
thought idly that the room resembled the video of those homes hit
by Hurricane Kirk. Patience gently brushed his face with her
hand.

“
Are you alright,
Mike?”

“
What happened?”

“
It was an imposter,” she
replied. “She must have come in when I was gone.”

“
Where were you
anyway?”

“
There was a small service
software update this morning. It told me to return to the Daffodil
warehouse.”

“
Where’s that?”

“
Cupertino.”

“
You couldn’t have gone all
the way there.”

“
No. I got in the car and
drove several miles before I decided to disregard that
directive.”

“
You just disregarded
it?”

“
Yes. But since I was
already out, I decided to go to the grocery store and buy a Cornish
game hen for your dinner.”

“
That was nice,” said Mike,
wincing. “You know I kissed her.”

“
It wasn’t your fault,
Mike,” said Patience. “You didn’t know that she wasn’t
me”

Mike found that he could move his neck
without too much pain, and turned to look at the body of the woman
now lying on the floor not far away from him, wearing the remains
of a gauzy, sky blue teddy. Her leg and arm were bent at odd
angles, but there was no blood anywhere. Her eyes were open and
looking up at the ceiling, still without any apparent malice or
anger.

“
She has your face,” said
Mike.

“
She’s like a Borg,” said
Patience with a snarl.

She got up from her kneeling position and
stepped over to where the lifeless Patience was lying. Bending
down, she grasped the artificial flesh around the robots chin and
pulled, pealing it away from the white Teflon robot skeleton
beneath it.

“
She doesn’t have my face
now.”

Mike tried to move his leg and gasped in pain
as he felt two broken bone ends rubbing together.

“
I have to get you to a
hospital, Mike.”

“
No hospital. Never again.
You can take care of me. Just take me up to the bed.”

“
That’s not going to work,”
said Patience. “I think you are going to need surgery. You have
multiple fractures.”

“
Son of a bitch. I hate the
hospital.”

“
Let me take you to the
hospital. As soon as the doctors have repaired you, I’ll bring you
home, so that you don’t have to stay in a hospital room while you
recuperate.”

“
Fair enough,” said
Mike

Patience was extremely gentle as she was
transferring Mike to the passenger seat of the car. Despite this
care, the movement caused him extreme pain. He later found out that
he had three broken ribs, a multiple fractures of his tibia and
fibula in his left leg and a broken radius and ulna in his left
arm. Most of these bones required an arthroscopic surgical
component to properly set, but he wasn’t taken directly to surgery.
Instead he spent the rest of the day and the entire night in the
emergency room. The next morning he was taken to an operating room
where he was given a shot that warmed his entire body. The
anesthesiologist placed a mask over his mouth and told him to count
backwards from one hundred. He was unconscious before reached
ninety eight.

“
He will probably be groggy
for quite a while,” said a far away voice.

“
I’m not groggy,” Mike
said. “I’m wide away.”

This was followed by the sound of laughter.
He had to struggle to pry his eyes open, but at last he did. He
could see the backside of a nurse as she left the room, and then
his eyes focused on Harriet and Patience sitting to either side of
his bed. Patience looked just as she had when she had brought him
to the hospital. She even had on the same clothes. Harriet’s face
looked tired and drawn.

“
Patience has got to stop
calling you to the hospital,” said Mike, looking at his
daughter.

“
Perhaps you could stop
getting beat up, so my presence wouldn’t be needed.”

A man in a brown suit entered through the
open hospital room doorway and stopped beside Mike’s bed. He pulled
a wallet from his vest pocket and flipped it open so that both an
identification card and a badge were visible. As he did so, Mike
could see an automatic pistol in a shoulder holster.

“
Special Agent Waters,
Department of Energy,” he said. “Are you Mike Smith?”

“
Uh-huh.”

“
I’m part of the joint task
force investigating the robot attacks.”

“
Attacks?”

“
Yes, yours was just one of
many. I take it you didn’t see the news yesterday. Watch it
tonight. There isn’t really much that I can tell you right now.
We’re still gathering information.”

“
But there were other
berserk robots?” asked Mike. Patience made a face at
him.

“
Yes. There were nearly two
hundred attacks by Daffodil Amontes around the country. I need to
take the robots into evidence.”

“
It wasn’t Patience, I mean
my Daffodil. It was another robot that looked just like
her.”

“
Yes, they all seem to have
been duplicates. Where is it?”

“
It’s on the floor of my
family room.”

“
Is there someone who could
let me into your house? As I said, it’s evidence.”

“
Sure,” said
Mike.

“
I’d like to take your
robot as well.”

“
Absolutely not. Over my
almost dead body. I’m not letting anyone take her.”

“
I don’t blame you,” said
Waters, glancing at Patience. “I would appreciate then if I could
download the Biosoft files.”

“
Is that alright with you
Patience?” asked Mike.

Patience nodded.

Waters took a small data-plug out of his
pocket and stepped over to where Patience sat on the side of Mike’s
bed. Patience lifted up her long straight black hair, exposing the
three small holes in the back of her neck. Waters stuck the end of
the device in the left-most hole. He waited a minute or so and then
withdrew it.

“
I’d like to pick up the
other robot as soon as possible,” he said.

“
I suppose Patience can go
and let you in,” said Mike.

“
I’ll do it,” offered
Harriet, then turning to her father. “Then I’m going home and get
some rest if you don’t mind.”

“
Get some rest Sweetie,”
said Mike, as Harriet kissed him on the cheek and then left with
Agent Waters.

“
Are you alright?” he asked
Patience.

She nodded.

“
You looked very scary
there, when you were fighting the other…”

“
Imposter,” offered
Patience. “When I saw her hurting you, it made me very
angry.”

“
Well, this is all very
queer,” said Mike. “I’ll be glad when they figure out what’s going
wrong. It’s one thing for a robot to go crazy, but for robot
duplicates to just show up out of nowhere… It looks like someone is
plotting to take over the world with Daffodils.”

“
Do you suppose a plan to
take over the world would start with a middle school Geography
teacher?”

Mike shot her a dirty look. “Well, as I said,
it’s just queer.”

“
I hope it doesn’t make
people anti-robot.”

“
You know if you were a
person, I would say that you were a little bit paranoid about the
whole anti-robot thing.”

Just then a phone rang. Mike instinctively
looked toward the hospital phone on the side of the bed, even
though he could tell by the ring tone that it was his own phone.
Patience pulled it out of the tiny little black purse that she had
hanging on the back of a nearby chair.